These statistics make for interesting reading, so we thought it would be helpful to our clients if we repeated some of these statistics for their consideration.
When a person prepares a Lasting Power of Attorney (be it a property and finance or health and welfare power, or indeed both}, it will be sent to the Office of the Public Guardian in Birmingham for checking and, if acceptable, for registration whereby the power becomes effective either immediately or when capacity is subsequently lost (depending on your personal preference).
As at the end of December 2016, the Office of Public Guardianship:-
1. Had registered 1.84 million LPA’s, of which 1.3 million were property and finance and 570,000.00 were health and welfare.
2. Received 2300 new applications to register every day, making approximately 50,000 per month. Of those registered, 33% were for the age range of 81 to 90, 31 % for the range of 71 to 80 and 19% for the range of 61 to 70. Younger people also registered powers, with 7% of registrations being in the age group of 51 to 60, 2% in the age group of 41 to 50 and 1% in the age group of 31 to 40, whilst there was also a sizeable number of registrations for the under 30 age bracket.
These figures show that age is no barrier to the creation of a Lasting Power of Attorney.
Interestingly, 38% of all registrations were by men, compared to 61 % by women {the remaining 1 % being “unknown”).
Adele says – “These figures show that more and more people are becoming aware of the need to plan for the future, and to guard against the problems that can arise if a person does not have an LPA and subsequently encounters a problem in life that means that they are either temporarily or permanently incapacitated. We at Kirkham Legal strongly advise our clients to consider ‘future proofing’ themselves against such eventualities, and are more than happy to answer any queries a client may have on a no-obligation basis.”
Our Practice Licence Number is 11250.
