12 August 2020
The Ministry of Justice has dropped the fixed fees regime it introduced in June for immigration and asylum appeals conducted online, after law firm Duncan Lewis brought judicial review proceedings
The online appeals procedure was still in its pilot phase but was rolled out in mid-March, partly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Lord Chancellor has now accepted the regulations introducing the fees regime were unlawful due to inadequate consultation, and has installed a temporary hourly rates system instead.
Law Society president Simon Davis said the fixed fees would have made the work ‘financially unviable for solicitors’, and ‘there was a very real risk that fixed legal aid fees for the preparation of appeals would have made the immigration tribunal inaccessible, as they were utterly inadequate for the work required’.
