New Legal Support Grant Funding (February 2023 – March 2025)

To note this is only a Prior information Notice for an upcoming Grant. For more information and to feedback at this stage, please join our early market engagement session at 12pm on 7 December. During the session the potential requirements, assessment criteria and rules of the process will be outlined and feedback will be gathered from potential applicants. The grant competition will then launch on 12 December. For further details and to be added to a mailing list, please contact Chloe Wall ([email protected])

The Legal Support Action Plan, published in February 2019, committed the Ministry of Justice to deliver better support for people experiencing legal problems. A key component of the Action Plan is for the Ministry of Justice to pilot and evaluate different forms of early legal support. The Ministry of Justice has ensured a strong focus on data collection and evidence-gathering in the previous grants that have been funded (see, for example, the Legal Support for Litigants in Person Mid-Grant review). The Ministry of Justice expects that this new Legal Support grant funding will build on the evidence and data that has already been collected, strengthening the existing evidence base and developing a stronger understanding of the impact of early legal support.

The total value of the new Legal Support Grant will be £10.4m to fund front-line organisations from 1 July 2023 – 31 March 2025. The Ministry of Justice will be inviting applications to manage the selection of front-line organisations who support individuals to resolve their legal problems and run the ongoing administration of the grant. It is expected that the successful intermediary will sign a Primary Grant Agreement with the Ministry of Justice in early February 2023 and run a secondary competition amongst organisations from February 2023 – May 2023 to make sure that this funding reaches organisations by 1 July 2023. The Ministry of Justice may direct the distribution of funding between different stages of the legal support user journey, from early intervention through to attending a court or tribunal.

Applicants should anticipate working directly with at least 50 front-line organisations and should have the capability to foster an environment of, and create fora for, information and data exchange and promoting collaboration and partnership working between the organisations.

If you are an organisation that is seeking to secure funding for your support services, this stage of the process is not for you. You will need to apply directly to the successful grant administrator in due course. Further details on this competition process will be provided in early 2023.

Applicants must be:

• A charity or institution (other than a charity) which is established for charitable, benevolent or philanthropic purposes

It is strongly desirable that applicants also:

• Are a specialist grants administrator
• Have experience of administering grants in the legal support sector
• Have sufficient resource to run a secondary competition across England and Wales with up to 200 applications within 3 months
• Have experience of working closely with data analysts, or the capability to work closely with data analysts, to produce an interim and final report and ad hoc analysis as the Ministry of Justice may require