Registering a Lasting Power of Attorney with the Office of the Public Guardian: Fees, Timescales and Signing Rules

Under the Mental Capacity Act 2005, completing and signing a Lasting Power of Attorney form is only the first stage. An LPA has no legal standing and will not be accepted by banks, mortgage lenders, care providers or hospitals until it has been formally registered by the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG).

Because OPG registration includes a mandatory 4-week statutory objection period plus administrative processing — typically taking between 8 and 16 weeks where there are no errors — most people apply to register their LPA immediately after signing it rather than leaving an unregistered document in a drawer.

Following The Public Guardian (Fees, etc.) (Amendment) Order 2025 (effective from 17 November 2025), the official OPG application fee to register an LPA in England and Wales is £92 per document. Because Property and Financial Affairs and Health and Welfare are two separate LPAs, registering both for one person incurs £184 in OPG fees (or £368 for a couple registering all four documents).

Where an LPA is rejected due to a drafting or execution defect and has to be re-submitted within three months, a repeat application fee of £46 applies.

The OPG provides fee support via Form LPA120 based on the donor's financial circumstances (not the attorneys'): a 50% remission (£46 per LPA) is available where the donor's gross annual income before tax is less than £12,000, and a 100% fee exemption applies where the donor receives certain qualifying means-tested benefits.

Every LPA in England and Wales requires a 'certificate provider' — an impartial adult aged 18 or over who signs Section 10 of the form to confirm that the donor understands the purpose and scope of the LPA, that no fraud or undue pressure is being used to induce the donor to create it, and that there is nothing else that would prevent the LPA from being created.

A certificate provider must be either someone who has known the donor personally well for at least two years (more than a passing acquaintance) or a person with relevant professional skills, such as a solicitor, registered healthcare professional or social worker. Family members, attorneys, replacement attorneys, business partners and employees of the donor or attorneys are strictly barred from acting as the certificate provider.

The Powers of Attorney Act 2023 is also progressively introducing digital registration channels and enhanced identity-verification checks for donors, attorneys and certificate providers to strengthen safeguards against fraud and coercion while maintaining paper routes for those who do not use digital services.

Each year the OPG has to query or reject thousands of LPA applications because sections were signed in the wrong order or contained unlawful instructions. The legal sequence is strict: first, the donor must sign Section 9 in front of a witness; second, the certificate provider must sign Section 10; third, each attorney and replacement attorney must sign Section 11 in front of a witness; and finally, the person registering the LPA signs Section 15.

If an attorney signs Section 11 dated even one day before the donor signs Section 9 or before the certificate provider signs Section 10, the LPA is legally invalid and must be re-executed. Similarly, the donor cannot witness an attorney's signature, and an attorney cannot witness the donor's signature.

Another frequent cause of OPG severance or rejection is writing contradictory instructions in Section 7 — for example, appointing attorneys to act 'jointly and severally' in Section 3 but then writing an instruction in Section 7 that requires them to make all decisions together, or attempting to authorise attorneys to change the donor's will (which an attorney can never do).

Once a person has lost the mental capacity required to understand and execute an LPA, it is no longer legally possible for them to create one. Instead, someone wishing to manage their property and financial affairs must apply to the Court of Protection to be appointed as a 'deputy'.

Compared with putting an LPA in place ahead of time, Court of Protection deputyship involves higher court application fees, formal medical capacity assessments, an annual security bond, ongoing OPG supervision fees and annual financial reporting — and the Court only rarely grants general deputyships for health and welfare.