PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Legal Aid Scheme: Children and Young People (8 December 2016)

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) children under 18 years of age and (b) young people aged 18 to 24 were granted legal funding under the Exceptional Case Funding Scheme in (i) 2013-14 and (ii) 2015-16.

Asked by:
Richard Burgon (Labour)

We believe that the exceptional funding scheme is functioning as intended. Its purpose is to provide funding where it is legally needed.

Every ECF application is carefully considered by the Legal Aid Agency on an individual basis.

The number of granted applications for Exceptional Case Funding by age of applicant and financial year of application shown in the table below.
Year	Under 18	18-24	Unknown
2013-14	1	4	13
2015-16	14	68	27
Please note, because client date of birth was only routinely recorded from October 2013 onwards figures for the above 2 years are not comparable.

For the avoidance of doubt, this data relates to the number of applications granted. It is possible for an individual to hold multiple legal aid certificates, and thus this data may not correspond with the number of discrete individuals granted funding.

Answered by:
Sir Oliver Heald (Conservative)
13 December 2016