The Ministry of Justice has once again extended a voucher scheme designed to help families resolve their disputes away from court – however, a lack of hard data demonstrating the value of the initiative appears to be hampering the ability to secure longer-term funding, it has emerged.

The Family Mediation Council (FMC) announced on Friday that the government was extending the voucher scheme - which gives families up to £500 towards the cost of mediation - by 12 months.

The scheme was introduced in March 2021 as a temporary measure to help the family courts recover from the impact of Covid but has been extended multiple times. Analysis from the first 7,200 families who used the scheme showed that more than two-thirds reached agreement without needing to go to court.

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At an opening event yesterday for Family Mediation Week, FMC executive officer Helen Anthony said the scheme is always extended by relatively short amounts of time. The council is now working with the Ministry of Justice to explore ways of collecting data that shows how valuable the scheme is.

Anthony said: ‘The Ministry of Justice came to us towards the end of last year. They know the value of mediation – that was not in doubt. What they have not got is data to demonstrate the value of the actual scheme in terms of putting public money into it. The general understanding is the voucher scheme works but they have not got the data to show it.’

Family mediation was the government’s flagship solution to the removal of legal aid for most private family law matters in 2013 – however, referrals nosedived and have struggled to climb up to pre-2013 levels.