Davies v Lettington: Court of Appeal clarifies legal aid rights in civil committal proceedings

The Court of Appeal has allowed an appeal by Mrs Ruth Davies against findings of contempt made by a county court judge who refused to adjourn the hearing to allow her to obtain publicly funded legal representation. The judgement, handed down on 27 March 2026, sets aside orders made following hearings on 19 June and 28 July 2025 and remits the committal application to a differently constituted court.

The underlying dispute concerned land at Coedmor Farm, near Llangoedmor, Cardiganshire. Mrs Davies, the freehold owner of the farm, had been the subject of an injunction obtained by her neighbours, the Lettingtons, following a four-day trial in August 2024. The injunction required her to remove fencing and reinstate a track. When the Lettingtons applied to commit her for breach, Mrs Davies attended the June 2025 hearing without legal representation, having been told by a local solicitor that legal aid was unavailable for civil matters.

Lord Justice Foxton, with whom Lord Justice Phillips agreed, found that the judge's refusal to adjourn was vitiated by a fundamental legal error. The judge had expressed uncertainty as to whether legal aid was available on a non-means-tested basis, and had suggested that the solicitors who advised Mrs Davies would know the correct position. That advice was wrong on both counts.

The correct position, traced through the statutory framework in the judgement, is that legal aid for civil committal proceedings is treated as criminal legal aid under section 14(h) of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, by virtue of Regulation 9(v) of the Criminal Legal Aid (General) Regulations 2013. Crucially, Regulation 39 of the Criminal Legal Aid (Financial Resources) Regulations 2013 removes any means test for proceedings other than those in the magistrates' court or Crown Court. There is accordingly no financial eligibility threshold for a defendant facing committal in the county court. Applications are determined by the Director of Legal Aid Casework rather than the court itself, a point confirmed in All England Lawn Tennis Club v McKay [2019] and consistent with the Court of Appeal's earlier analysis in Brown v London Borough of Haringey [2015].

The Legal Aid Agency's own guidance for providers, updated in October 2025, reflects this: the "Means Information" field on the portal should be answered "No" for civil contempt proceedings, directing the application to a dedicated non-means work queue.

The judgement reaffirms the line of authority running from Hammerton v Hammerton [2007] through Brown and O (Committal: Legal Representation) [2019]: a defendant to committal proceedings is entitled to legal representation if they want it, and absent extreme urgency or conduct amounting to a refusal to engage, an adjournment must be granted to allow that representation to be obtained. As Moses LJ observed in Hammerton, it will rarely be appropriate to speculate whether representation would have made a difference to the outcome.

None of the matters advanced by the Lettingtons to justify the refusal — Mrs Davies' ability to represent herself at trial, the absence of detailed evidence of her attempts to obtain legal aid, or the risk of delay — were found capable of displacing that right, particularly as none had been raised by the judge at the hearing itself.

The judgement also addresses the suggestion that the right to representation operates with less force at the breach-finding stage than at the sanctions stage. That distinction was firmly rejected: findings of breach are the equivalent of a verdict of guilt in conventional criminal proceedings and directly shape any subsequent sanction. Legal aid entitlement under LASPO does not distinguish between the two stages, nor does the automatic right of appeal under CPR r.81.4(2).

Lord Justice Foxton's judgement includes a detailed exposition of the statutory route to legal aid in county court committal proceedings, noting McCombe LJ's observation in Brown that no clear legislative provision sets this out in straightforward terms — a lacuna that, on the evidence of this case, continues to cause difficulty in practice.