Legal Aid Agency
Standard cost limitations in family law cases are changing and this will affect substantive certificates sent out after 1 May 2016.
The new cost limitation after 1 May will be 5,000. There will be no changes to emergency delegated functions certificates where the standard 1,350 will apply.
All applications with limitations currently set at more than 5,000 will remain at their higher cost limitation. For example, Special Children Act proceedings.
Providers can change the cost limitation in the Client and Cost Management System (CCMS) for family law cases before submission. Plans are in place to make amendments to CCMS for this to happen automatically.
Why are we doing this now?
This change has been introduced to help reduce the number of amendment requests which need to be submitted to the Legal Aid Agency (LAA). The benefit to yourselves includes:
- cases can be worked on for longer before an increase is needed
- less involvement from the LAA during the lifetime of the case