The Legal Aid Agency (LAA) has begun to replace a number of e-forms with new ones developed in-house by September of this year.
It has indicated that it is working on five forms for which the current contract with Equiniti for the eForms service will end in September: to apply for criminal legal aid, claim a non-standard magistrates’ court payment, apply for prior authority to incur disbursements; apply for extension of upper limits; and access historic eForms information.
The relevant digital services are currently being rolled out.
Providers will no longer be able to submit through eForms from 6 August, although the LAA will continue to process claimed that are already within the service up to 20 August. Only LAA caseworkers will have access to eForms data from that date.
“Data from 2009 until 19 March 2024 has been migrated and restored from existing eForm submissions,” the LAA said. “A further data migration and restoration will need to occur between Tuesday 20 August and Friday 6 September for any new or updated data.
“Providers are encouraged to use the new services as soon as they become available. Doing so will bring more stability to service provisions.”
