The amount spent on family mediation plummeted in 2013/14 – suggesting that the government has not done enough to promote services following legal aid cuts.

Out of a potential pot of £24m available to mediators, the Ministry of Justice spent only £9.4m, according to figures obtained by Marc Lopatin, founder of Lawyer Supported Mediation.

He said the figure was ‘clear evidence that you can’t build a market for family mediation without valuing the role of lawyers as advisers’.