Public funding cutbacks have led to a situation where only two education law providers in England and Wales now have legal aid contracts, a senior education solicitor has warned.
Writing in NLJ this week, John Ford, principal of John Ford Solicitors, expresses regret that successive governments have removed the means of ordinary people to have access to qualified competent lawyers
Ford places much of the blame on the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO), which he says restricted the scope of civil legal aid: “It is greatly regrettable that, even though the scope of education law to cover children and people under 25 with learning difficulties was officially retained by the changes which could not be resisted, when LASPO was passed, the operation of the publicly funded legal system was consciously modified to remove 95% of the expert providers who could have given advice under legal aid,” he said.
Ford adds that this was achieved, intentionally or not, by “cutting the rates of pay and making costs assessment rules which defeated most meritorious claims”.
Meanwhile, speaking in Parliament this week, Education Secretary Justine Greening presented plans for £50m new funding to expand existing grammar schools, greater selection on academic grounds in state schools and tighter conditions on selective and independent schools.
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