Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the (a) shortest, (b) mean average and (c) longest period of time was that it has taken for the Office of the Public Guardian to register a lasting power of attorney document in the last 12 months.

In the last 12 months (from 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023), the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) registered and dispatched 916,059 Lasting Powers of Attorney (LPA) applications. All LPAs are subject to a statutory notice period of four weeks. The shortest period for OPG to register and dispatch an application was 20 days; this was for highly urgent cases and includes the statutory notice period. The mean average to register and dispatch an application was 91.52 days. The longest period was 983 days in a case where it was necessary to refer the matter to the Court of Protection.

The above figures exclude the registration of Enduring Powers of Attorney which, while valid, have been replaced by LPAs since the Mental Capacity Act 2005 came into effect. An LPA application is considered ‘received’ once payment is made by the customer to the OPG. The application process is completed once an application is registered and dispatched to the customer. Applications may take longer to be registered if they contain errors that need to be rectified by the customer. The time taken for customers to remedy these errors is included in the length of time recorded. ‘Days’ represent working days, i.e. excluding weekends and bank holidays.

OPG is facing high demand to register LPA applications, including overcoming a backlog created during the pandemic. OPG is advising customers that the processing time for LPA applications is currently up to 20 weeks, including the statutory waiting period. To return to processing times achieved before the pandemic, extra staff have been hired, staff are working overtime and across multiple shift patterns, and process efficiencies have been introduced. The government is also supporting the Powers of Attorney Bill, which will create a faster and simpler service for customers in future.