A combination of mistakes and confusing instructions have rendered thousands of power of attorney applications unsuccessful.
A Freedom of Information request by Hargreaves Lansdown showed that in the financial year 2023/24, 50,918 power of attorney applications were rejected.
This number includes 30,180 financial LPAs and 20,738 health and welfare LPAs.
Data from the Office of the Public Guardian shows that during the year, a total of 1,370,546 applications were received, equating to a rejection rate of 3.7%.
Hargreaves Lansdown said the number of people applying for an LPA has shot up in recent years, with over 8 million powers of attorney currently in existence. In 2023/24, there were more than 1.37 million applications, up 28% year on year and an increase of more than 60% in the last five years.
Sarah Coles, head of personal finance at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “There is a significant backlog in applications and in 2023/24 it took an average of 76 working days to process each one. If you make a mistake that will prolong the agony because the application will be rejected. It means families need to take care not to fall foul of the rules.”
Coles said there are a number of common mistakes that applicants make including spelling names wrong, signing signatures in the wrong order, failing to provide all the information needed and failing to ensure that corrections are made properly with the initials of the person who made the mistake.
In addition, Coles said applicants must notify the specific people required and ensure that instructions are clear, well understood and do not conflict with something else in the document.
Applicants should also understand the rules around who attorneys act for and not issue instructions for how replacement attorneys should act.
There are changes set to be introduced which should help streamline the process and allow more to be done online. However, it will include more robust ID checks and Coles said applicants should understand what these new rules will mean for them going forward.
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