Almost one in four people in England and Wales live in a legal aid desert

• Analysis of local authority data finds that 14.49 million people in England and Wales, or 23.4% of the population, live in an area classed as a legal aid desert
• Pattern of geographic inequality that mirrors wider regional disparities, with smaller, rural and coastal communities suffering the worst gaps.

LONDON, Aug. 17, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- LexisNexis^® Legal & Professional, a global leader in information, analytics and AI-powered legal workflow solutions, has published new research revealing that access to legal aid remains highly uneven across England and Wales.

The Legal Aid Deserts report uses the latest available public data to compare indicators of legal need with legal aid provider capacity. The analysis found that 91 local authorities are classed as legal aid deserts in at least one of the five areas analysed: housing, family, crime, immigration and employment. Together, these authorities are home to 14.49 million people, or 23.4% of the population of England and Wales.

37 local authorities, with a combined population of 5.38 million, fall into the lowest-scoring category in two or more areas. Eight local authorities are classed as legal deserts in four or more areas: Babergh, Breckland, Derbyshire Dales, East Cambridgeshire, East Devon, Rutland, South Norfolk and West Berkshire.

In practice, legal aid deserts are areas where there is a high need for legal support, but access to legal aid provision appears comparatively weak. For people living in these areas, the consequences can be severe: a tenant facing unlawful eviction with no solicitor, a parent navigating a custody dispute without representation, or a worker dismissed unfairly with no route to redress. For most, the alternative to legal aid is no legal help at all.

The report highlights significant pressure across individual areas of law. It found that 6.6 million people live in housing legal aid deserts, 4.2 million live in family legal aid deserts, 3.6 million live in crime legal aid deserts, 4.6 million live in immigration legal aid deserts, and 4.1 million live in employment legal aid deserts.

The findings suggest that the sharpest access gaps are often concentrated in smaller, rural, coastal and semi-rural authorities, where provider capacity appears limited relative to legal need. Regionally, the weakest-performing authorities are concentrated most heavily in the East of England, the East Midlands and parts of the South East, with further pressure points in the South West. London, by contrast, is largely absent from the most acute legal aid desert lists.

Commenting on the importance of accessible legal aid, Kirsty Brimelow KC, Chair of the Bar Council of England and Wales, said:

“Legal aid is a vital part of the justice system, meant to ensure that everyone receives the support they need to access justice, regardless of their financial situation. It provides equality of arms between parties trying to resolve their disputes and enables citizens to exercise their rights through the courts.”

“Legal aid deserts reduce access to good quality legal advice at the early stages of proceedings, which in turn causes poor case management decisions and delays to both the case and its resolution.”

Jasmine Basran, Head of Policy and Campaigns at the national homelessness charity Crisis, said:

"Being able to access housing legal aid can be the turning point that helps someone out of homelessness or helps them avoid it altogether. Early legal advice can stop an eviction becoming a homelessness application. Without it, problems that could have been resolved cheaply and early can spiral, forcing people into temporary accommodation at far greater cost to the person and to the public purse.”

“This report provides a critical update on legal aid across England and Wales. Even where housing legal aid exists, far too often it's out of reach.”

Josh Giddens, Executive Sponsor of Rule of Law at LexisNexis, said:

“Four years on from our first analysis, many of the areas we identified as legal aid deserts in 2022 haven't recovered.”

“Access to legal representation shouldn't depend on where you live, how much you earn, or how far you can travel to find help. When that access doesn't improve for years at a time, the Rule of Law itself is weaker for it and that gap becomes a pattern.”

Methodology

The analysis draws on public data on legal aid provider locations, population, local authority geography and area-specific indicators of legal need across housing, family, crime, immigration and employment. For each practice area, the model compares estimated legal need with local legal aid provider capacity, adjusts for population, and applies a 15 km catchment rule to reflect nearby access to support. Local authorities in the bottom 10% of the resulting access measure are classified as legal aid deserts.

About LexisNexis^® Legal & Professional

LexisNexis^® Legal & Professional provides AI-powered legal, regulatory, business information, analytics, and workflows that help customers increase their productivity, improve decision-making, achieve better outcomes, and advance the rule of law around the world. As a digital pioneer, the company was the first to bring legal and business information online with its Lexis^® and Nexis^® services. LexisNexis Legal & Professional, which serves customers in more than 150 countries with 11,900 employees worldwide, is part of RELX, a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers.

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