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The Bailiwick's Legal Aid Service underspent on its budget by £643,000 last year, but at the same time the amount of money owed to the service increased - reaching just over half a million pounds in 2022.
Legal Aid enables free or reduced cost access to legal advice in criminal and civil cases in Guernsey, Alderney, Herm, and Sark. The bulk of the work is carried out in Guernsey.
Applicants to legal aid must meet criteria including meeting financial guidelines which include upper income and savings limits.
Last year the Guernsey Legal Aid Service had a budget of £2,880,000. The service spent £2,237,000 meaning there was an underspend of £643,000.
Most of that money was spent on family court services - funding divorce, child custody and other related cases.
The second largest spending area was criminal matters - primarily funding defence lawyers for suspects.
Pictured: Where legal aid was spent during 2022.
Family court costs amount for 47% of the entire legal aid expenditure at £1,049,000 in 2022.
Criminal legal aid cost £749,000 and accounted for 33% of the entire legal aid spend last year.
Civil - and non family - cases took up 4% of the expenditure at £86,000.
The cost of funding and providing those services came to £353,000 - or 16% of the overall budget.
That paid for five members of staff: A Legal Aid Administrator, Deputy Legal Aid Administrator, Administration Officer, Finance Officer and Executive Assistant.
Property costs are also covered but that reduced by £26,800 during 2022 when the legal aid service moved into Edward T Wheaton House alongside other States services.
Pictured: Civic and criminal cases are heard at one of the courts within the Royal Court Building.
The majority of legal aid work is provided by Advocates at £167 an hour - for many that is a reduction on the hourly rate charged to clients paying for their services directly.
Out of 252 advocates registered as practicing in Guernsey, only 25 take on legal work.
Legal aid also pays Non -Admitted Lawyers (a Solicitor/Lawyer who is not admitted to the Guernsey Bar) £83.50 an hour with Paralegals being paid £55.70 per hour.
Pictured: The amount of money owed to the Guernsey Legal Aid Service over the past three years.
223 service users owed the legal aid service a collective debt of £503,000 at the end of last year.
That is up slightly from last year but up £120,000 from 2021.
The longest standing debt dates back to 2007.
The majority of debtors make regular weekly or monthly payments towards their debt which mainly relate to civil Recover and Preserve matters which is where the assisted person has recovered or preserved assets at the conclusion of the court proceedings funded by Legal Aid Service.
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