The government should pay for all family mediation information sessions, not just legally aided ones, for 12 months and increase fees paid to mediators and solicitors, a major report into mediation has concluded.
The Family Mediation Task Force, led by Sir David Norgrove, was commissioned by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) after publicly funded family mediations fell by a third following the introduction of the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) last April.
Its report, published this week, recommends raising the fees paid to mediators for a fixed three-year period, and making mediation information assessment meetings (MIAMs) exempt from the 12-month residence test for eligibility.
The Legal Aid Agency had planned for a spending increase of £10m in mediation, to £25m per year following LASPO. In reality, there had been a “steep decline” in public spending on mediation, down by over half, or by about £8m per year to under £6m per year, as the result of fewer mediations and the removal of payments to mediators to contact respondents.
The drop in mediations resulted in redundancies and some closures among mediation businesses.
Nigel Shepherd, vice-chair of Resolution, welcomed the call to “abolish fault based divorce” which could “often be a significant barrier to reaching agreement”.
"There is a great deal of frustration among our members that publicly-funded mediation numbers have plummeted since LASPO, and there is a welcome recognition in the report that the loss of the referral route from solicitors has created a barrier to people accessing mediation,” he said.
“It’s therefore important that government recognises the crucial role that family lawyers play—particularly those who sign up to the Resolution Code of Practice—in helping separating couples reach agreement. We’d like to have seen this addressed more directly in the recommendations, and we do have concerns that this represents a missed opportunity to address some of the problems that LASPO has caused.”
