Access to Justice Act 1999
Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Access to Justice Act 1999 (c. 22) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
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Provisions
It replaced the legal aid system in England and Wales. It created the Legal Services Commission, which replaced the Legal Aid Board.[1] It also created two new schemes: Community Legal Service to fund civil and family cases, and the Criminal Defence Service for criminal cases, with the Legal Services Commission overseeing both schemes.[2][1] The Act put a cap on the amount spent on civil legal aid.[3] The use of conditional fee agreements, commonly known as "no-win no-fee", was extended to most civil court cases.[4] The act retained funding for public law cases.[5]
Rights of appeal
Section 54 of the Act both creates and limits rights of appeal. One effect of this, as set out in the UK Supreme Court Practice Direction 1[6] is "The most important general restriction on rights of appeal is section 54(4) of the Access to Justice Act 1999. The effect of this provision is that the Supreme Court may not entertain any appeal against an order of the Court of Appeal refusing permission for an appeal to the Court of Appeal from a lower court." This accords with Section 40(6) of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005.
Commencement
The act came into force in April 2000.[4]
Further developments
In 2017, the President of the Supreme Court, Lord Neuberger described the legislation as "hard to defend" and also stated that the legislation was "flag-ravingly named".[7]
