Andover Solicitors Bonallack and Bishop, who until recently were the biggest providers of family legal aid locally , have announced that they have now given up all family legally aided work at their Andover office. They have now given up all legal aid work at their Andover office with the exception of medical negligence claims. Tim Bishop, the firm’s Senior Partner, told the Andover Advertiser;

"The firm has always been committed to help the disadvantaged and vulnerable by doing a variety of legal aid work. However the government have consistently refused to increase legal aid pay rates for the last eight years and introduced new fixed fee family payments on October 1 last year which substantially reduced those rates of pay. As a direct result my firm no longer takes legally aided family law cases in Andover or our other offices . Just four years ago there were four firms willing to take on family legal aid cases in Andover. Now there is just one."

"It is not that solicitors are greedy but that the new rates are simply unprofitable," continued Tim. " Reductions of up to 30% in rates of legal aid pay , which are already well below what solicitors charge private clients, whilst maintaining the same quality of work with the costs of running a solicitors practice increasing year by year is an impossible business proposition . The government themselves acknowledge that in a review commissioned in 2003 which they held back until January 2007 and which they eventually slipped out with little or no publicity "

“Solicitors have for many years effectively used their other profitable work to subsidise legal aid. The new proposed rates will simply lead to many more solicitors giving up huge areas of legal aid work. Other firms who are unable to replace legally aided work with privately paying individual and business clients, as we have done successfully, will simply go out of business. I predict the entire legal aid system is likely to collapse within the next few years. There are already a large number of "advice deserts” such as Romsey, where you simply cannot find a legal aid solicitor. It is proving a similar pattern to the recent government mishandling of NHS dentists. With a vastly decreasing number of lawyers willing to do legal aid work, and with many of the best legal aid lawyers opting out, it will inevitably lead to injustice and harm to the very vulnerable people the government claim to care about, and will significantly heighten pressure on the resources of the courts as they have to deal with increasing numbers of unrepresented clients. "

Tim concluded, " Personally for many years I have been proud to be a highly specialist childcare lawyer acting for parents, children in care and social services themselves, but with the new reduced rates of pay, sadly I no longer take on any new legally aided childcare cases and am running my existing caseload down. Like many other solicitors, I need to develop new skills and will instead concentrate full-time on managing my firm and on business development. "