The Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2026 make a focused change to Crown Court advocacy payments in England and Wales. According to the statutory instrument published on legislation.gov.uk, the Regulations were made on 1 July 2026, laid before Parliament on 3 July 2026 and come into force on 28 July 2026. The instrument amends Schedule 1 to the Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013. That schedule contains the Advocates' Graduated Fee Scheme and related fixed and miscellaneous fees for Crown Court proceedings.
The first amendment is to paragraph 18(2)(a) on wasted preparation. The legislation replaces the word "five" with "two", reducing the trial length threshold that must be met before an advocate can apply for that fee. For practitioners, the immediate effect is that shorter trials may now reach the threshold for a wasted preparation claim. A case that lasts two days, rather than five, can fall within the amended rule from 28 July 2026, subject to the rest of the scheme conditions.
The second amendment concerns paragraph 18A, which deals with the additional preparation fee. The Regulations remove wording that previously excluded guilty plea cases, so the fee can now be claimed where a guilty plea is entered. The amount payable also rises from £62 to £81. On the face of the instrument, that is a £19 increase for each claim that meets the paragraph 18A conditions.
Regulation 3 limits the scope of the change. The new rules apply to services provided following a determination under section 16 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 made on or after 28 July 2026. That cut-off matters for billing and file management. Chambers, solicitors' firms and costs teams will need to identify the date of the section 16 determination on each matter, because cases authorised before 28 July 2026 do not automatically move onto the revised fee position.
The drafting also confirms the territorial reach. These Regulations extend to England and Wales only, and they are made under powers in sections 2(3) and 41 of the 2012 Act. The instrument is signed by Sarah Sackman, Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice, by authority of the Lord Chancellor. In policy terms, this is not a wholesale restructuring of criminal legal aid remuneration. The explanatory note makes clear that the change is confined to Schedule 1 of the 2013 Regulations and, within that schedule, to the rules on wasted preparation and the additional preparation fee.
The explanatory note also states that no full impact assessment has been produced because no, or no significant, effect on the private, voluntary or public sectors is foreseen. That indicates the Ministry of Justice sees the measure as a contained adjustment to an existing fee scheme rather than a broad system change. Even so, the operational workload is real. Providers will need to update internal guidance before 28 July 2026, review claim templates for guilty plea matters, and make sure case-opening and billing teams apply the amended two-day threshold and the new £81 figure in the correct cohort of Crown Court cases.