Legal Aid - Remuneration for Cases Directly Committed to the Crown Court

Overview

Background

The Department of Justice (“the Department”) is responsible for legal aid policy including remuneration. Legal aid remuneration plays a vital role in ensuring that there is a fair and equal access to justice in Northern Ireland. Legal aid exists to help people who meet eligibility criteria pay for a solicitor or other legal practitioners including those who are charged with a criminal offence and brought before a court. The court process can be a long and drawn out and a challenging experience for victims, witnesses and the accused. The current committal process often leads to delays and increased costs. This new process expedites the committal process in the magistrates’ court and aims to speed up justice and make efficiencies.

Legal aid remuneration is reviewed and managed by Enabling Access to Justice Division. The criminal legal aid fees proposed in this consultation relate to the introduction of the new committal process.

Please note that this consultation is solely in respect of legal aid fees, any queries relating to the underlying Direct Committal policy should be forwarded to the Justice Performance Team via email to justiceperformanceteam1@justice-ni.gov.uk.

Aims and objectives

This consultation relates to proposals for criminal legal aid fees for solicitors and barristers relating to the introduction of a new committal process, Direct Committal, which is part of the Committal Reform Programme. This reform represents a co-ordinated response across the criminal justice system and targets both procedural efficiency and human impact.

The key objectives of Committal Reform are to speed up justice, simplify the committal process, improve victims and witnesses’ experiences while maintaining fairness for defendants. This involves reducing unnecessary delays and therefore expediting cases, making efficiencies in court processes and therefore reducing costs.

These proposals follow the Justice Act (Northern Ireland) 2015 and Criminal Justice (Committal Reform) Act (Northern Ireland) 2022 which were implemented to streamline the committal process. In phase 1 the use of oral evidence during committal proceedings was eliminated for new cases.

Direct Committal is phase 2 of the Committal Reform Programme and aims to speed up justice by removing the traditional committal process which takes place in the magistrates’ court, initially for the most serious offences.

The amendments will be initially brought forward via a Direction and associated guidance under:

• the Magistrates' Courts and County Court Appeals (Criminal Legal Aid) (Costs) Rules (Northern Ireland) 2009 (“the 2009 Rules”)
• the Legal Aid for Crown Court Proceedings (Costs) Rules (Northern Ireland) 2005 (“the 2005 Rules”)

Introducing these proposals is the first step to establish fees for Direct Committal.

For Committal Reform the Justice Act (NI) 2015 and the Criminal Justice (Committal Reform) Act (NI) 2022 were implemented to simplify the committal process, in phase 1 the use of oral evidence during committal proceedings was eliminated for new cases. This change aimed to reduce costs and delays, benefit victims and witnesses and lower attrition rates. Direct Committal is phase 2 of the Committal Reform Programme, being introduced to speed up justice and is overseen by the Criminal Justice Board and is part of a wider Speeding up Justice Programme.

The aim of Direct Committal is to remove the traditional committal process for the most serious offences from the magistrates’ court, with most cases being directly transferred to the Crown Court at the first court appearance (depending on the complexity of the case). By directly transferring cases to the Crown Court and reducing the number of hearings, the aim is to ensure that serious offences are dealt with more efficiently and expeditiously.

The role of Enabling Access to Justice Directorate is to support the Justice Performance Team and the Speeding up Justice Programme by developing and introducing criminal legal aid fees for direct committed cases. This includes remuneration for:

• the Direct Committal Hearing in the magistrates’ court
• additional Case Management Hearings in the Crown Court
• Discontinuation of Proceedings for these cases in the Crown Court
• an Application to Dismiss for these cases in the Crown Court.

In developing these proposals the Department had regard to the statutory criteria set out in Article 37 of the Legal Aid, Advice and Assistance (Northern Ireland) Order 1981.

These proposals are made at a time of extensive reform in relation to enabling access to justice and legal aid remuneration. The fees may therefore be impacted by ongoing reforms, particularly the accelerated review of criminal legal aid fees. All proposals are subject to financial approval.

The closing date for views on the impact assessments contained within is 11:59pm on 28 July 2026.

It is anticipated that Direct Committal will begin in November 2026 with remuneration for directly committed cases commencing from it's official start date.

Enquiries

If you have any queries regarding this consultation or require additional information, please write to EAJDConsultations@justice-ni.gov.uk.

Confidentiality and Access to Information

For this consultation, we may publish all responses except for those where the respondent indicates that they are an individual acting in a private capacity (e.g. a member of the public). All responses from organisations and individuals responding in a professional capacity will be published. We will remove email addresses and telephone numbers from these responses; but apart from this, we will publish them in full. For more information about what we do with personal data please see our consultation privacy notice below.

Your response, and all other responses to this consultation, may also be disclosed on request in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR); however all disclosures will be in line with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679.

If you want the information that you provide to be treated as confidential it would be helpful if you could explain to us why you regard the information you have provided as confidential, so that this may be considered if the Department should receive a request for the information under the FOIA or EIR.