An LPA puts the right person in charge of your finances and healthcare if you ever lose capacity. Awareness is growing, the Office of the Public Guardian received 1.37 million applications in 2024/25, a record. But here is what surprises almost everyone: in 2023-24, more than 50,000 LPA applications were rejected for errors in the paperwork, nearly one in ten, and rejections rose 199% compared with 2021.
The scale of the problem
Freedom of Information data obtained by Which? showed 50,918 applications rejected in 2023-24 alone, 60% of them Property and Financial Affairs LPAs, with more than 162,000 rejected over five years. Each rejection is a family who delayed, stressed, and paid again, often while already dealing with illness or crisis.
Why do so many applications fail?
The forms are more demanding than they look, requiring precise information, a strict signing order, and eligible witnesses and certificate providers. The most common reasons for rejection are:
- Incorrect signing order — the donor must sign first, then the certificate provider, then the attorneys. This is the single most common cause.
- Missing or incorrect names — full legal names throughout; even "Carol" vs "Carole" can mean a bank refuses it later.
- Incomplete sections — missing signatures, undated boxes, skipped fields.
- Wrong certificate provider — they must have known the donor for two years, or be an eligible professional.
- Contradictory instructions — e.g. appointing attorneys "jointly and severally" while also requiring a majority vote.
- An outdated form — only current GOV.UK forms are valid.
- Correction fluid or pencil — any such correction invalidates the page.
Real consequences for real families
Financial cost: registration is £92 per document (£184 for both); miss the three-month window to resubmit and you pay in full again. Delays when it matters most: even an error-free LPA takes 8 to 10 weeks; a rejection adds weeks or months, and if the donor loses capacity during the delay, the LPA cannot be created at all. Hidden errors: some LPAs are registered despite mistakes that only surface when an attorney tries to use the document at a bank or hospital, and is turned away.
Why professional guidance matters
This is not about distrust of your abilities; it is the nature of the document. When we set up your LPA we complete the current forms accurately and in full, guide you through the signing step by step at your kitchen table, verify your certificate provider and witnesses meet the legal requirements, submit to the OPG on your behalf, and follow up until it is registered. If anything needs correcting, we handle it, you do not pay again or discover the problem at the worst possible moment.
The right time to act is now
An LPA can only be created while you still have full mental capacity; once it is lost it is too late. You cannot fast-track it in a crisis or create one retrospectively. The families we see in the most distress are those who kept meaning to get around to it and found themselves at the Court of Protection in the middle of a medical emergency. Done properly, an LPA takes two appointments and a few weeks, and the protection lasts a lifetime.
We help families across North Somerset, Bristol and Bath set up both types of LPA, in plain English, and make sure it is done right first time.