Five Reasons the OPG Rejects LPAs, and How to Avoid Every One

The Office of the Public Guardian rejects a meaningful minority of the LPAs it receives, around one in seven on first submission, from the numbers reported in successive annual reports and observed across our own file traffic and that of the wider profession. Once rejected, an LPA can't be salvaged: you file a fresh one, and the £82 registration fee is due again. On a mirror pair for a couple that's £164 gone, plus another eight to ten weeks of processing time.

Rejections almost never happen for interesting reasons. They happen because someone signed a section in the wrong order, or a witness was disqualified, or an instruction contradicted the powers, or the certificate provider wasn't allowed to be one.

Here are the five we see most, and what to do about them.

1. Signing sections in the wrong order

The LPA has a strict signing sequence and the OPG enforces it. It is set out in the LP1F and LP1H forms themselves but easy to miss in a rush.

The order is:

1. The donor (that's you) signs Section 9. On the LP1H you also sign Section 5, the life-sustaining treatment choice, before Section 9. 2. The certificate provider signs Section 10, after the donor, and only after they have discussed the LPA with the donor privately. 3. Each attorney and each replacement attorney signs Section 11, after the certificate provider. 4. The applicant (if not the donor) signs Section 15, last.

Signatures dated out of sequence, for example, an attorney signing on a Tuesday, the certificate provider signing on the Wednesday, will be rejected by the OPG regardless of how obvious the fix seems.

How to avoid it: we ship signing instructions with every LPA that spell out the order and dates. Where practicable, get everyone in the same room on the same day. Where that isn't possible, sequence the visits with dated instructions.

2. A disqualified certificate provider

The certificate provider signs Section 10 confirming that they have discussed the LPA with you privately, that you understand what you're granting, and that no one is pressuring you. The rules on who can do this job are strict.

They can be:

• Someone who has known you personally for at least two years, in a way that means they can properly assess your understanding.
• A professional with the relevant skills, for example, a GP, a solicitor, a registered social worker, an independent mental capacity advocate.

They cannot be:

• An attorney or replacement attorney on this or any other LPA of yours.
• A member of your family.
• A member of the family of any of the attorneys.
• Your business partner or paid carer.
• Your GP if that GP is also your attorney's GP (yes, this happens).
• The proprietor or an employee of a care home you live in.
• Under 18.

How to avoid it: the questionnaire runs a disqualification check on the certificate provider you propose. If they're disqualified we tell you before you commit and offer alternatives, usually a professional certificate provider we can arrange as part of the instruction.

3. Attorneys who can't act

The rules on attorneys are less strict than on certificate providers but the OPG still rejects LPAs where an attorney was ineligible or where the "how attorneys act" section is incoherent.

Attorneys must be:

• 18 or over.
• Not currently bankrupt or subject to a Debt Relief Order (for financial LPAs, this restriction doesn't apply to health & welfare attorneys).
• Not disqualified in some way, for example, subject to certain criminal convictions relating to dishonesty.

And the "how they act" section must be internally consistent:

• If you appoint attorneys jointly, they must all agree on every decision. If one dies, becomes bankrupt, loses capacity, or is otherwise unable to act, the whole LPA fails unless you have appointed replacements.
• If you appoint them jointly and severally, any one of them can act alone.
• If you specify jointly for some decisions and jointly and severally for others, the specified decisions must be listed clearly and unambiguously. This is where LPAs get rejected, vague specification, inconsistent lists, decisions that don't actually exist as separable categories.

How to avoid it: the questionnaire warns you against pure "jointly" appointments without replacements, and where you specify mixed decisions we use a structured picker rather than free text so the OPG receives a clean, unambiguous list.

4. Instructions and preferences that overreach

Section 7 of the LPA lets you add preferences (guidance to your attorneys) and instructions (binding requirements). It's a useful section and it's where LPAs are most often rejected.

Rejections cluster in three places:

• Instructions that purport to grant powers outside the LPA. For example, "my attorneys may amend my will", an attorney under an LPA can never amend your will; that's a statutory bar and an instruction saying otherwise is invalid.
• Instructions that contradict the powers granted. For example, "my attorneys must not sell my house under any circumstances" combined with a general financial LPA, the OPG treats this as either a contradiction (rejecting the LPA) or as narrowing the LPA to the point where it doesn't do what you wanted.
• Instructions that require impossible things. For example, "my attorneys must obtain the unanimous consent of my children before any decision" where you have four children scattered across three continents. Even where valid, this creates a functionally unusable LPA.
• Instructions that repeat the statutory duties. "My attorneys must act in my best interests" is fine but pointless, it's already the law. The OPG doesn't usually reject on this ground but it clutters the document.

How to avoid it: the questionnaire uses a structured template for preferences and instructions, with plain-English prompts that steer you toward things that work and away from things that don't. Free-text goes through a pre-submit review by a solicitor.

5. A blank Section 5 on the LP1H

Section 5 of the Health & Welfare LPA is the one about life-sustaining treatment. You choose:

• Option A, your attorneys can give or refuse consent to life-sustaining treatment on your behalf.
• Option B, your attorneys cannot make this decision; doctors decide in your best interests, consulting your attorneys.

There is no default. If you leave Section 5 unmarked, or mark both, or mark neither, the LPA is rejected.

It's the hardest section of the form, and the one people leave for later and forget. The rejection is particularly painful because the fix, actually making the decision, is precisely the thing you were avoiding.

How to avoid it: the questionnaire won't let you submit the LP1H until Section 5 is answered. Before you commit we give you a plain-English walkthrough of what each option means, so you're not signing something you don't understand. If you genuinely can't decide, we can book a call with a solicitor to work through it.

Honorary mention: witnessing errors

Not one of the top five but worth naming: the witness to your signature on Section 9 (donor) must be an adult, not one of your attorneys, and must sign in your physical presence, not "in your presence" over a video call, notwithstanding what emergency legislation allowed briefly during the pandemic. Same rule for the witnesses to your attorneys' signatures. Where a witness is later found to have been disqualified or wasn't actually present, the LPA is rejected or, worse, later challenged.

The pattern

Every one of these is preventable with structured drafting and a review before submission. The OPG is not looking for reasons to reject, its rejection rate is a symptom of forms drafted by people who don't know the rules and no one caught it before submission.

We catch it. That's the entire value proposition.

Related reading on this site: - Our LPA service, all three products → - LPA vs Advance Decision → - The Business Owner LPA →

Sources: - Office of the Public Guardian, LPA forms and registration - LP12 guide, Make and register your lasting power of attorney - Mental Capacity Act 2005, Schedule 1 paragraphs 2 and 4 (certificate provider requirements) and Schedule 4 (legislation.gov.uk) - Ministry of Justice / OPG published rejection statistics in OPG annual reports and accounts

This post is marketing material and general information. It is not legal advice. Speak to a solicitor before making or relying on a Lasting Power of Attorney.