Huge backlog of power-of-attorney cases as civil servants work from home

A BACKLOG blamed on civil servants working from home has left hundreds of thousands of elderly and vulnerable people unable to hand over critical financial powers to their loved ones.

A third of a million applications for lasting power of attorney (LPA) are pending at the government agency responsible for registering them, while the waiting time rose from 40 days to 140 days during the pandemic.

Lawyers have said the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) is no longer “fit for purpose” amid a huge backlog.

The OPG admits on its phone line’s recorded message that applicants should “wait at least 20 weeks” before trying to contact officials. The message warns that as a result of Covid, “many of our staff are working from home” and that “this is impacting response times in our contact centre and processing lasting-powers-of-attorney applications”.

An OPG spokesman said the message was in error and would be changed and that front-line staff who had to be in the office to process applications were doing so. But the OPG admitted other staff were only expected to be in the office a minimum of two days a week, including the leadership team. Jacob Rees-mogg, the Cabinet minister for government efficiency, said: “It seems unlikely to be entirely a coincidence that poor service delivery occurs with high workingfrom-home rates. Executives should lead by example and be in the office every day until the backlog is cleared.”

In a letter urging the OPG to speed up the process, lawyers, will-writers and financial planners from the BEST Foundation campaign group said: “Many of our network have experienced the death of a client whilst waiting for an LPA to be registered. This document, which could have made their lives a little easier during their last days, never arrived.”

A spokesman for the OPG insisted staff working from home had no bearing on the delays.