Family mediation statistics

Family mediation statistics for England and Wales come from three main sources, none of which counts every mediation. The Ministry of Justice publishes quarterly figures for legally aided Mediation Information and Assessment Meetings (MIAMs), mediation starts and outcomes in its legal aid statistics; the Family Mediation Council surveys its registered mediators, most recently in The State of Family Mediation 2025; and the Ministry publishes data on the Family Mediation Voucher Scheme.[1][2][3] Privately funded mediation is not centrally recorded, so there is no national total.[2]

The available figures show a sector that has never recovered the volume it had before legal aid for solicitors in private family law was withdrawn on 1 April 2013. Legally aided mediation outcomes in January to March 2026 were “around half of pre-LASPO levels”, although MIAMs were up 2 per cent and outcomes up 8 per cent on a year earlier.[1][4] In 2024/25 there were 12,837 legally aided MIAMs and 9,841 legally aided mediation starts; about 70 per cent of cases proceed to mediation where both people attend a MIAM; and 58 per cent of legally aided outcomes in the year to March 2025 were recorded as agreements.[2][5] Among the first 7,214 voucher-funded families, 69 per cent reached agreement without going to court or went only for a consent order.[3] Provider datasets report higher agreement rates on narrower bases.[6]

Written by Jess Knauf, Director of Client Strategy at Mediate UK and Associate Member of Resolution. Reviewed by Chris Yaffes, FMC-accredited family mediator (FMCA) and child-inclusive mediator, practising since 2013. Last reviewed 6 September 2026; last updated 6 September 2026; next scheduled review March 2027.

What is and is not measured

There is no register of family mediations in England and Wales. What is counted depends on who pays. Legally aided MIAMs and mediations are counted because the mediator claims a fixed fee from the Legal Aid Agency for each one, and the claims data feed the Ministry of Justice’s quarterly legal aid statistics.[1] Voucher-funded mediations are counted because the mediator claims the voucher and completes a questionnaire on the outcome.[3] Privately funded MIAMs and mediations, paid for by the parties, generate no central record; the only national evidence about them comes from the Family Mediation Council’s periodic survey of its members and from figures that individual providers choose to publish.[2] Every headline statistic about family mediation therefore describes a subset, and the subsets overlap: a legally aided case can also carry a voucher, and a provider’s own figures include both.[3]

What the main data sources on family mediation in England and Wales measure
PopulationCounted byWhat is recordedWhat is not
Legally aided casesLegal Aid Agency claims, published by the Ministry of JusticeMIAMs, mediation starts, outcomes, whether the outcome was an agreementAnything about the other party where privately funded; durability of agreements[1]
Voucher casesScheme administrator questionnaire, analysed by the Ministry of JusticeWhether agreement was reached on all, some or no issues; whether the family went to court; cost; formatLater breakdown of agreements; cannot be linked to court records[3]
Privately funded casesNo one centrallyEstimates from FMC member surveys; provider publicationsVolumes, outcomes, fees, other than by survey[2]
Court applicationsHM Courts and Tribunals Service, published as Family Court Statistics QuarterlyCases started and disposed, timeliness, representationWhether a MIAM or mediation preceded the application[7]

The court statistics are the mirror image. Family Court Statistics Quarterly records every private law children and financial remedy application, but not whether the applicant attended a MIAM or tried mediation; the MIAM box on Form C100 is not compiled into published statistics.[7] The Ministry of Justice’s 2015 research had to review 300 court files by hand to find that only 19 per cent of applicants clearly showed MIAM attendance, with the position unclear in 41 per cent.[8]

The sources

Principal sources of family mediation statistics for England and Wales
SourcePublisher and frequencyLatest editionCovers
Legal aid statistics England and WalesMinistry of Justice, quarterly; bulletin plus ODS and CSV tablesJanuary to March 2026, published 25 June 2026Legally aided MIAMs, mediation starts, outcomes and agreements, quarterly from April 2017 in the current tables[1][9]
The State of Family MediationFamily Mediation Council, periodic survey report2025 (September 2025)Register size and accreditation, legal aid providers, fees, caseloads, child-inclusive mediation, public awareness (Survation, 1,007 adults, January 2025)[2]
Family Mediation Voucher Scheme analysisMinistry of Justice, one-offMarch 2023First 7,214 voucher cases: outcomes, cost, format, legal aid overlap[3]
Ministerial announcements and FOI disclosuresMinistry of Justice, irregular15 May 2026 (54,000 parents); FOI data to 2025/26Cumulative voucher take-up and spend[10][11]
MIAMs and mediation in private family law disputesMinistry of Justice Analytical Series, one-off2015Practitioner survey and court file review, before and after LASPO[8]
Family Court Statistics QuarterlyMinistry of Justice, quarterlyJanuary to March 2026, published 25 June 2026Private law children and financial remedy caseload, timeliness, legal representation[7]
Provider datasetsIndividual mediation services, annual or ad hocVaries; for example Mediate UK 2025 outcomes (July 2026)A single provider’s MIAMs, conversion and agreement rates[6]

The tables from these sources are compiled and kept current, with each figure dated and sourced, on Mediation Guide’s family mediation statistics page, published by Family Legal Ltd, the publisher of this wiki.[12] This article explains what the figures mean and where they come from rather than reproducing the tables.

The Ministry of Justice’s legal aid statistics are the only continuous official series. Each quarterly bulletin has a family mediation section, described as covering cases in which “an independent and impartial professionally-accredited mediator” works with a divorcing or separating couple, and the accompanying tables give the number of legally aided MIAMs (called assessments), mediation starts and outcomes, and the proportion of outcomes that were agreements, by quarter.[1] The current published chart runs from April to June 2017 to January to March 2026.[1]

The January to March 2026 bulletin reports that “the volume of MIAMs increased by 2% in the last quarter compared to the previous year and family mediation outcomes increased by 8%”, and that outcomes “are now sitting at around half of pre-LASPO levels”.[1] It adds that figures for mediation starts “are not currently available” for that quarter. The statistician’s comment explains that legal help, mediation and lower crime figures were being published for the first time since the previous annual release, drawn from a new data collection system and including data submitted during the period affected by the Legal Aid Agency cyber-attack, and that mediation figures were “broadly in line with the previous year”.[1][9] The absolute quarterly figures are in the ODS tables on the publication page rather than in the bulletin text; they are not reproduced here.[9]

The previous year’s bulletin, for January to March 2025, gave a fuller picture: MIAMs were up 7 per cent on the year, mediation starts up 30 per cent and total outcomes up 3 per cent, “of which 58% were successful agreements”.[5] The Family Mediation Council, drawing on Legal Aid Agency data for the 2024/25 year, reports 12,837 legally aided MIAMs, 9,841 mediation starts and 4,767 cases ending in agreement, with about 70 per cent of cases proceeding to mediation where both people attended a MIAM and the second party failing to attend in about 32 per cent of cases.[2] The two published agreement rates differ because the denominators differ: 58 per cent is agreements as a share of recorded outcomes, whereas 4,767 of 9,841 is agreements as a share of starts, about 48 per cent, which includes cases that had not concluded or ended without a recorded outcome.[5][2]

The pre-LASPO comparison is the most quoted feature of the series. The Ministry’s 2015 research recorded that publicly funded MIAMs fell from 30,662 to 13,354 in the year after 1 April 2013, and the Justice Committee put the fall at an estimated 17,246, or 56 per cent, against a government forecast of 9,000 additional MIAMs a year.[8][13] Legal aid for mediation is explained on legal aid for family mediation.

Family Mediation Council survey data

The Family Mediation Council is the standards body for family mediation in England and Wales and maintains the register of authorised mediators.[14] Its report The State of Family Mediation 2025, published in September 2025, combines register data, a survey of its member mediators and a Survation poll of 1,007 UK adults conducted in January 2025.[2] It is the only source on the size and shape of the whole profession, including its privately funded part.

Selected figures from The State of Family Mediation 2025, Family Mediation Council
MeasureFigureNote
Mediators on the FMC register1,025 in 2025, compared with 1,100 in 201867 per cent accredited (FMCA), 33 per cent working towards accreditation[2]
Mediators offering legal aid238 in 2025, compared with 450 in 2018A fall of about half, attributed to legal aid rates unchanged for 25 years[2]
Most common private MIAM feeAround £150 per personRange from £84 to more than £400[2]
Cost of mediation in children cases26 per cent under £500; 44 per cent £500 to £1,000Successful privately funded cases[2]
Cost of mediation in finance cases36 per cent £500 to £1,000; 18 per cent £1,000 to £1,500As above[2]
Mediators reporting increased caseload58 per cent, by 22 per cent on averagePast twelve months; 67 per cent among legal aid mediators[2]
Children aged ten or over consulted directly16 per cent of cases involving such childrenChild-inclusive mediation[2]
Adults aware of family mediation66 per cent very or somewhat awareSurvation, January 2025[2]

Survey figures depend on who responds. The FMC report notes varying response rates and does not give a member-survey sample size for every question, so its fee and caseload figures are indicative rather than a census.[2] Its register counts, by contrast, are administrative and complete. The FMC also relays Legal Aid Agency and voucher data, which is why the same numbers appear in more than one source.[2]

Voucher scheme data

The Family Mediation Voucher Scheme has generated the largest single outcome dataset since its launch on 26 March 2021, because every claim carries a mediator questionnaire.[15][3] The Ministry of Justice’s March 2023 analysis of the first 7,214 concluded cases found that mediators recorded agreement on all or some issues in 5,574 cases (77 per cent) and that, after removing families who went on to court for anything other than a consent order, 4,961 (69 per cent) were successful; the average claim was £424, total claims £3.1 million, 88 per cent of mediations were online, one party had legal aid in 29 per cent of cases, and mediators judged that 51 per cent of families “only mediated because the scheme was available”.[3]

No further analysis has been published. Later figures are cumulative counts: more than 27,000 families and £23.6 million by April 2024, with “two-thirds” avoiding court; more than 54,000 parents by May 2026 at more than £7 million a year; and, from Ministry data released under the Freedom of Information Act, 57,335 vouchers granted worth £28.7 million by May 2026, with 14,579 issued in 2025/26.[16][10][11] The FMC reports 13,675 vouchers and £6.15 million in 2024/25, with the 69 per cent success rate holding.[2] The scheme’s own limitations, set out in the 2023 analysis, are that outcomes are mediator-reported, that the data “could not be linked to family court data”, and that there is no follow-up on whether agreements last.[3] The compiled voucher figures are on Mediation Guide, and the scheme itself on Family Mediation Voucher Scheme.[17]

Ministry of Justice research

The most substantial official research remains Mediation Information and Assessment Meetings (MIAMs) and mediation in private family law disputes, published in the Ministry of Justice Analytical Series in 2015 by Becky Hamlyn, Emma Coleman and Mark Sefton.[8] It combined snapshot surveys of Legal Aid Agency-contracted practitioners in November 2013 and March 2014 (115 and 72 responses, response rates of 48 and 30 per cent) with a review of 300 court files, 150 children and 150 finance cases, from five courts, for cases started between April 2012 and September 2013.[8]

Its findings set the benchmarks still used. Publicly funded MIAMs fell from 30,662 to 13,354 after LASPO while the proportion converting to mediation rose from 44 to 63 per cent; practitioners reported private conversion rates of 66 to 76 per cent, lower where the MIAM was held separately and among younger clients; and around 68 per cent of mediations reached full or partial agreement.[8] In the court files only 19 per cent of applicants clearly showed MIAM attendance. The authors noted that practices serving only private clients were outside the survey and that there was no pre-LASPO baseline for privately funded work.[8] The government’s 2024 consultation response, which declined to make mediation compulsory, relied mainly on the voucher analysis rather than new research.[18]

Family Court context

Mediation statistics are usually read against the Family Court’s private law caseload, which the policy aims to reduce. In January to March 2026, 15,534 private law children cases were started, 16 per cent more than in the same quarter of 2025, involving 29,793 orders applied for and 22,928 children; 12,646 financial remedy applications were made, up 11 per cent; and 28,632 divorce applications were made, down 5 per cent.[7] The mean time to dispose of a private law children case was 35 weeks, about five weeks less than a year earlier.[7]

Representation figures bear directly on mediation, because unrepresented applicants are less likely to be referred to it. In private law disposals in January to March 2026 neither party was legally represented in 49 per cent of cases and both were represented in 13 per cent.[7] The Justice Committee found in 2015 that the removal of solicitors from most private family cases, rather than any change in the MIAM rules, explained most of the fall in mediation, since before LASPO solicitors “did an awful lot of selling of out-of-court solutions”.[13] Court statistics are covered on Family Court Wiki, and the position of unrepresented parties on litigant in person.

Provider-level data

Some mediation services publish their own figures. These are useful for what national data omit, chiefly privately funded cases, but they describe one provider’s clients and methods and are not comparable with the Legal Aid Agency series or with each other. Mediate UK, a trading name of Family Legal Ltd, the publisher of this wiki, publishes an annual outcomes page. For 1 January to 31 December 2025 it reports a 90 per cent agreement rate among cases that completed joint mediation (77 per cent full agreement and 13 per cent partial), around 70 joint sessions for every 100 MIAMs attended, and 948 joint sessions and 26 child-inclusive sessions in the year.[6] Its separate data methodology page reports that 1,748 of 2,088 MIAMs at which both people attended proceeded to joint mediation, about 84 per cent.[19]

The methodology is stated on the page: activity figures are taken from invoiced appointments, agreement rates from “mediator case outcome records at case closure”, the 90 per cent figure excludes people who attended a MIAM but did not proceed to joint mediation, and “agreement outcomes are recorded by our own mediators and are not independently audited”.[6] Those limitations apply to most provider data. A provider’s agreement rate is calculated on people who chose to mediate and whose cases the provider judged suitable, whereas the legal aid series counts every funded start, and the voucher analysis removes families who later went to court. A 90 per cent rate on completed mediations, a 69 per cent rate on voucher cases and a 58 per cent rate on legally aided outcomes therefore measure different things and are not evidence that one population fares better than another.[6][3][5]

How often does mediation succeed?

The answer depends on the definition. Measured as agreement on all or some issues at the end of mediation, official and research figures cluster between two-thirds and three-quarters: 68 per cent in the Ministry of Justice’s 2015 research, 77 per cent of voucher cases on the mediator’s record, and 69 per cent of voucher cases once those who went to court for anything other than a consent order are excluded.[8][3] Measured as a share of all legally aided outcomes, including cases that broke down, 58 per cent were agreements in the year to March 2025.[5] Measured on the narrower base of cases that complete joint mediation with a single provider, published rates are higher, for example 90 per cent for Mediate UK in 2025.[6] None of these figures measures whether the agreement lasted, because no source follows families up.[3]

Two further ratios matter. Only about 70 per cent of legally aided cases proceed from MIAM to mediation, largely because the other person does not attend, and the Ministry’s 2015 research put private conversion at 66 to 76 per cent.[2][8] Mediation’s overall contribution to keeping disputes out of court is therefore the product of the attendance rate, the conversion rate and the agreement rate, and no published figure captures all three together.

History of the data

Development of family mediation statistics in England and Wales
DateDevelopment
2012 to 2013Publicly funded MIAMs reached 30,662 in the year before LASPO, the high point of the legally aided series[8]
1 April 2013LASPO removed most private family law from legal aid; publicly funded MIAMs fell to 13,354 in the following year[4][8]
2015Ministry of Justice Analytical Series research on MIAMs and mediation; Justice Committee report on LASPO quantified the fall at 56 per cent[8][13]
April 2017Earliest quarter shown in the current legal aid statistics chart of family mediation assessments, starts and agreements[1]
26 March 2021Voucher scheme launched, creating a second official outcome dataset[15]
March 2023Ministry of Justice analysis of the first 7,214 voucher cases[3]
June 2025January to March 2025 legal aid bulletin: starts up 30 per cent, 58 per cent of outcomes agreements[5]
September 2025Family Mediation Council published The State of Family Mediation 2025[2]
25 June 2026January to March 2026 legal aid bulletin: MIAMs up 2 per cent, outcomes up 8 per cent, starts unavailable after the change of data system; Family Court Statistics Quarterly for the same period[1][7]

Limitations and debate

The central limitation is coverage. Because privately funded mediation is uncounted, the sector cannot say how many families mediate each year, and claims about mediation’s share of separations rest on surveys. The FMC’s 2025 report shows how thin the legally aided base has become, with 238 mediators offering legal aid, so that the official series describes a shrinking and unrepresentative part of the market.[2] The change of data collection system at the Legal Aid Agency, and the 2025 cyber-attack, interrupted the series and left mediation starts unpublished for January to March 2026.[1][9]

The second limitation is the measurement of success. All three outcome measures rely on the mediator’s own record, none follows families after mediation ends, and the voucher data cannot be linked to court files.[3][6] The voucher scheme’s headline figure counts families who, so far as the mediator knew when the claim was made, had not gone to court, not families who never did; the Ministry has continued to cite the same two-thirds figure as the number of families passed 54,000.[3][10] The FMC report also records research finding that domestic abuse screening at some MIAMs “took under three minutes on average”, which bears on whether the cases counted as suitable for mediation were correctly identified.[2] The government’s 2024 response drew on the voucher analysis and announced a funded early legal advice pilot; no national evaluation of family mediation has been published since the 2015 research and the 2023 analysis.[18][16]

See also

References

  1. Legal aid statistics England and Wales bulletin, January to March 2026. Ministry of Justice. 25 June 2026. Accessed 5 September 2026.
  2. The State of Family Mediation 2025. Family Mediation Council. September 2025. Accessed 5 September 2026.
  3. Family Mediation Voucher Scheme analysis. Ministry of Justice. March 2023. Accessed 5 September 2026.
  4. The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (Commencement No. 6) Order 2013, SI 2013/453. legislation.gov.uk. Accessed 5 September 2026.
  5. Legal aid statistics England and Wales bulletin, January to March 2025. Ministry of Justice. June 2025. Accessed 5 September 2026.
  6. Mediation outcomes 2025. Mediate UK (Family Legal Ltd). Provider data for 1 January to 31 December 2025; outcomes recorded by the provider’s own mediators and not independently audited. updated July 2026. Accessed 5 September 2026.
  7. Family Court Statistics Quarterly, January to March 2026. Ministry of Justice. 25 June 2026. Accessed 5 September 2026.
  8. Hamlyn, B., Coleman, E. and Sefton, M.. Mediation Information and Assessment Meetings (MIAMs) and mediation in private family law disputes: quantitative research findings. Ministry of Justice Analytical Series. 2015. Accessed 5 September 2026.
  9. Legal aid statistics quarterly: January to March 2026 (publication page with ODS data tables). Ministry of Justice. 25 June 2026. Accessed 5 September 2026.
  10. Families spared time and money during separation thanks to government action. Ministry of Justice. 15 May 2026. Accessed 5 September 2026.
  11. Family mediation voucher scheme extended amid sharp rise in uptake. Family Law (LexisNexis). Reports Ministry of Justice figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Russell-Cooke LLP. 18 May 2026. Accessed 5 September 2026.
  12. Family mediation statistics: the key numbers. Mediation Guide (Family Legal Ltd). last updated 9 July 2026. Accessed 5 September 2026.
  13. Impact of changes to civil legal aid under Part 1 of LASPO: Eighth Report of Session 2014-15, chapter on family mediation (paragraphs 139 to 151). House of Commons Justice Committee. 4 March 2015. Accessed 5 September 2026.
  14. Practice Direction 3A: Family Mediation Information and Assessment Meetings (MIAMs). Ministry of Justice. Accessed 5 September 2026.
  15. Family Mediation Voucher Scheme. GOV.UK. Accessed 5 September 2026.
  16. Thousands of families spared from damaging courtroom conflict. Ministry of Justice. 3 April 2024. Accessed 5 September 2026.
  17. Mediation voucher scheme: results and data. Mediation Guide (Family Legal Ltd). last reviewed 9 July 2026. Accessed 5 September 2026.
  18. Supporting earlier resolution of private family law arrangements: government response. Ministry of Justice. 12 February 2024. Accessed 5 September 2026.
  19. Data methodology and sources. MIAM UK (Family Legal Ltd). Mediate UK 2025 case management data: 2,088 MIAMs at which both people attended, 1,748 proceeding to joint mediation. updated 15 June 2026. Accessed 5 September 2026.

This article is part of Family Mediation Wiki, published by Family Legal Ltd. It is general information about the law of England and Wales, not legal advice. Last reviewed 6 September 2026. About this site and editorial policy · Report an error.