The Legal Aid Agency (LAA) has begun publishing user guides and frequently asked questions for its new portal ‘Signing into Legal Aid Services’ (SILAS) developed in the wake of the cyber attack which rendered the agency’s portal unusable.
A new ‘LAA SILAS Help and Information‘ has been published on gov.uk which currently hosts the information.
A restoration of service for Crime Applications began on Monday 15th September 2025 which will enable access to LAA platforms ‘Crime Apply’ and ‘Submit a Crime Form’ (also known as NSCC) through the new SILAS platform. The LAA said the platforms ‘will look and feel as they did prior to the outage’ and the processes to submit, update and complete applications will be the same. In the short term access to Crime applications is restricted to 7am to 7apm Monday to Friday to ‘support security measures over the initial restoration of services.’
Last week Minister of State for Courts and Legal Services Sarah Sackman said the new portal was ‘nearly ready’ having undergone testing by a small pilot group throughout August. In a response to a Parliamentary written question Sackman said there would be a phased return of access to Legal Aid portal, starting with Crime, followed by Civil systems (Civil Apply, and the Client and Cost Management System (CCMS)), and services relating to the Controlled Work Administration (CWA) will follow in October.
The LAA portal has been offline since April when the extent of the cyber attack was revealed. Since then the agency has admitted as many as 2m people who have applied for applied for legal aid in the last 15 years could have had their details compromised including addresses, national insurance number, employment status and financial data.
