Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many orders are currently waiting to be processed by the Office of the Public Guardian; and what the average number of orders waiting to be processed by that office was during the period between 1 January 2019 and 31 December 2019.

There are currently (as of 5 July 2022) 350,000 LPAs waiting to be processed by the Office of the Public Guardian. This represents all applications which the OPG has received and is currently processing and is not a reflection of the applications which have exceeded the 40-day target and might be considered to be part of a "backlog". OPG does not hold data on the average number of LPAs waiting to be processed between 1 January 2019 and 31 December 2019.