Proposals for the Reform of Legal Aid in England and Wales
This consultation paper, published in 2010, proposes reforms to the legal aid scheme, many of which were enacted by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012.
In June and July 2014, Citizens Advice undertook a six week survey to enable Citizens Advice Bureaux employment advisers to provide information on the clients they were seeing with a potential cause of action to the Employment Tribunal. As well as providing details of the case, advisers were asked to assess, where possible, the strength of the claim; the likelihood of the client pursuing the claim, and the reasons for their assessment. This briefing summarises the main findings of the survey.
Key findings were:
•80 per cent of cases were assessed by an adviser as having a Very good, Good or 50/50 chance of success if they were pursued to employment tribunal.
•Less than a third of claims assessed as having a Very good, Good or 50/50 chance of success were considered likely to be, or were definitely being, taken forward.
•For claims less than £1,000 in value, less than a quarter were assessed as likely to be, or were definitely being, taken forward.
•Where cases were assessed as unlikely to be taken forward, fees or cost were the most common reasons given by the adviser, in over half of cases.
•The most common bases of claim were unfair dismissal and withholding of wages. Holiday pay was the next most common basis of claim.
•One fifth of cases contained discrimination as a basis for the claim.
•40 per cent of clients were potentially eligible for fee remission.
•43 per cent were not in employment at the time of their contact with the bureau adviser. 25 per cent were claiming a social security benefit as a direct result of the alleged complaint against the employer.
One Year On from the Introduction of Fees to Access the Employment Tribunal: Summary of Results from a Survey of Employment Cases Brought to Citizens Advice Bureau.
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