How LPAs Are Going Digital: The Powers of Attorney Act 2023

I have been writing about Lasting Powers of Attorney for years now and, honestly, the system has been stuck in 2007 for most of that time. Paper forms. Wet ink. Posting originals to Birmingham and then just... waiting. Weeks of it. For a document that decides who controls your finances or your medical care if you can't speak for yourself? That process needed a serious shake-up.

So when the Powers of Attorney Act 2023 got Royal Assent in September 2023, I was genuinely pleased. Not cautiously optimistic, not "wait and see." Pleased. This is the biggest reform to the LPA framework since the Mental Capacity Act 2005 created the thing in the first place, and it's being phased in over the next few years. The short version: LPAs are going digital.

Now, that doesn't mean paper vanishes overnight. I'll get into that later. But the direction here is clear, and it's the right one. Faster processing. Stronger fraud protections. Better identity checks. And, yes, actually being able to do the whole thing without a printer and a trip to the post office. If you've got an existing LPA or you're thinking about making one, stick with me. I'll walk through what's changing and what it means for you.

The fact this passed with cross-party support tells you everything about how overdue it was. I can't remember the last time Parliament agreed on anything this quickly. The Act gives the Lord Chancellor authority to update how LPAs get created, signed, and registered without needing to push through a whole new piece of legislation each time. That's a smart structural choice, because the old system was rigid to the point of absurdity.

At its heart, the legislation does three things. It allows LPAs to be built and registered through a fully digital channel. It brings in identity verification for everyone involved, the donor, attorneys, certificate provider, witnesses, all of them. And it tightens the safeguards against fraud, especially by changing who's actually allowed to register the document. That last one is huge and I'll come back to it.

The Act is the scaffolding. The nuts and bolts sit in secondary legislation and in what the Office of the Public Guardian is doing operationally. It's phased, not a big bang, and some of the bigger pieces are still working their way into the live service. But I've watched the OPG's progress on this closely and they've been delivering. It's not vapourware.

Let me paint you a picture of how things have worked until now. You fill in your forms, either online or on paper. You print everything. You get each person to sign by hand, in the right order (mess up the sequence and the whole thing gets rejected). You post the originals to the OPG. Then you wait eight to twelve weeks for a stamped copy to come back. Every single step involves paper. Every handoff is a point of failure.

I've lost count of how many clients have told me their documents went missing in the post. Or that the OPG bounced their application because the certificate provider signed on the wrong date. The whole thing has felt like a relic.

Under the new system, the full lifecycle of an LPA can happen digitally. Creating it, verifying identities, collecting electronic signatures, submitting, getting confirmation. The OPG started building the tech for this well before the Act passed, and the "Make an LPA" service on gov.uk has come a long way from where it started.

What does "electronic signatures" actually mean though? Not typing your name into a box on a PDF, if that's what you're picturing. The secondary legislation will nail down exactly what qualifies, but the intention is a proper process that confirms who is signing, records their consent, and is genuinely harder to forge than a squiggle in biro on a printed form. Good. Because pen signatures were never the security measure we pretended they were.

The biggest win is speed. No postal delays, no data-entry backlogs at the OPG, and automated checks can flag obvious errors before a caseworker even looks at it. The OPG has said openly that processing times should drop once the digital channel is fully up and running. I believe them on this one.

This is, in my opinion, the single most important change in the entire Act. I think it deserves more attention than it's gotten.

Here's the problem it fixes. Under the current rules, either the donor or the attorneys can submit an LPA for registration. Think about that for a second. Your attorney, the person you're giving power to, could push through the registration of a document you didn't fully understand or were pressured into signing. Yes, the certificate provider is supposed to catch that. But we all know those safeguards have gaps. Once registration goes through, the attorney has legal authority whether you genuinely wanted them to or not.

The Powers of Attorney Act 2023 changes this. Only the donor can apply to register. Full stop. If you made the LPA, you're the one who confirms you want it activated. Nobody else gets to do that for you.

This didn't come out of nowhere. Charities like Hourglass (which used to be called Action on Elder Abuse), legal professionals, and the OPG itself had been raising red flags about financial abuse of vulnerable adults for years. The cases where LPAs were weaponised to strip elderly donors of their savings weren't common in raw numbers, but each one was devastating. I've read some of those case reports. They stay with you.

Now, there's a practical wrinkle. What if someone signs their LPA but loses capacity before they get around to registering it? The Act addresses this. If the donor had already taken steps towards registration, there are mechanisms for the process to continue. The details are being finalised in secondary legislation, but the principle is right: a genuine LPA shouldn't fail because of bad timing. The change is meant to block abuse, not create a new bureaucratic trap.

Here's something that has always baffled me about the current LPA process. Nobody checks whether the people named in the document are actually who they claim to be. The certificate provider confirms the donor understands the LPA and isn't being coerced, sure. But systematic identity verification? Doesn't exist. In 2025. For a document granting control over someone's life savings and medical decisions. I find that wild.

The Act finally introduces proper identity checks. Everyone connected to the LPA, the donor, each attorney, replacement attorneys, the certificate provider, witnesses, all of them have to prove their identity.

For the digital route, this will probably run through the government's existing identity infrastructure. GOV.UK One Login already handles identity checks for a growing list of government services, and the OPG has pointed in that direction for LPAs. The process typically involves matching your details against official records, sometimes with a photo check using your phone camera and a passport or driving licence.

Why does this matter so much? Because if someone tries to set up a fraudulent LPA naming themselves as attorney for a person who never agreed to it, identity verification at every stage makes that incredibly difficult. Pair it with the donor-only registration rule and you've closed off the two main routes that bad actors have used. I think these two changes together are worth the entire Act.

For most people creating a legitimate LPA, the identity check will add a few minutes. You verify yourself once, your attorneys and certificate provider do the same, and the application proceeds with everyone confirmed on record. A small price for a much stronger system.

I promised I'd come back to this, so here it is. The government has been very explicit: a paper route for creating LPAs will stay available for people who can't or don't want to use digital services.

This is important and I'm glad they've committed to it. Because here's the thing. The people most likely to need an LPA are often the same people least comfortable doing everything on a screen. Plenty of people in their seventies and eighties don't have smartphones. Some don't have email addresses. They've never logged into a government website and they're not about to start now. Telling them their only option is a digital service would be, well, tone-deaf doesn't really cover it.

So the paper process will run alongside the digital one. It might take longer, since the OPG will naturally prioritise the faster digital channel, but it will be there. Organisations like Age UK and Citizens Advice pushed hard on this point and the Act's provisions explicitly allow for it.

If you're helping an older relative create an LPA and they're not online, the paper forms will still work. You could also use a service like ours to handle the digital side on their behalf while they provide the decisions and signatures in person. That hybrid approach works well in practice and I think it'll become more common as the digital system beds in.

The OPG has been quietly rebuilding its own plumbing alongside the Act, and it's worth talking about because it affects everyone with a registered LPA, not just new applicants.

In January 2025, the OPG switched to a new internal case management system, replacing the ageing technology it had been limping along with. This is the behind-the-scenes infrastructure that processes applications, tracks registrations, handles objections, and stores the digital record of every LPA. For applicants, the most visible result should be faster turnaround. Less manual data entry, better tools for caseworkers, quicker error resolution. Over time, this should chip away at the processing backlogs that have frustrated people for years.

On the public-facing side, the "Use an LPA" service on gov.uk keeps expanding and, honestly, I think it's one of the best things the OPG has done. Here's how it works. Your attorney logs in, generates a unique access code, and shares that code with whichever organisation needs to verify the LPA. A bank, a utility company, a care provider. That organisation enters the code online and sees a summary confirming who the attorneys are, what type of LPA it is, and any restrictions.

Before this existed? Your attorney had to post the original stamped document, or a certified copy, to every single bank and insurer that wanted proof. Documents got lost. Companies sat on them for weeks. I remember one client whose attorney was trying to manage five different organisations simultaneously with one physical document. It was genuinely painful to watch.

The access code system fixes all of that. Your attorney can share verification with multiple organisations at the same time. Each code lasts for a set period and can be cancelled if needed. Most major banks already accept it and the list keeps growing.

As the Powers of Attorney Act changes roll out, the "Use an LPA" service is expected to develop further, potentially tying into the new identity verification requirements and giving richer information to the organisations that depend on it.

If you've got a registered LPA, whether you made it last year or fifteen years ago, it stays valid. I want to be really clear on this because I've had several people contact me worried they'd need to start over. You don't. The Powers of Attorney Act 2023 does not cancel or downgrade existing documents. Your LPA works exactly as it did before.

You don't need to make a new one to "upgrade" to the digital system. You don't need to re-register. The stamped document from the OPG is still legally binding and your attorneys can still use it.

The "Use an LPA" digital service is already open to holders of existing registered LPAs. If your attorneys haven't set up access yet, they can do so any time through the gov.uk service. I'd strongly recommend doing this now rather than waiting for a crisis. Having the digital codes ready means your attorneys can share verification with a bank or care provider in minutes, not days. When you actually need an LPA to work, speed matters enormously.

If your LPA was made under the older Enduring Power of Attorney system (that's pre-October 2007), it also stays valid for financial matters. But EPAs don't cover health and welfare, and the new Act doesn't change that. You'd still need a Health and Welfare LPA if you want someone making medical decisions for you.

One thing I'm keeping an eye on: the OPG may eventually offer a way to voluntarily digitise older paper LPAs into the new system. Nothing confirmed yet, but given the direction everything is heading, I'd be surprised if it doesn't happen. I'll update this guide when there's news.

In November 2025, the OPG registration fee went up from £82 to £92 per LPA. So if you're making both a Property and Financial Affairs LPA and a Health and Welfare LPA, you're looking at £184 in registration fees.

The increase is partly funding the modernisation programme the Act requires. Building a digital LPA service, rolling out identity verification, replacing ancient IT systems, and keeping a parallel paper route running all costs money. The government's argument is that the fee keeps the service self-funding without pulling from general taxation. Fair enough, I think, though I know not everyone agrees.

Ten pounds per LPA isn't going to break anyone's budget, and it's the first increase in a while. Fee exemptions and reductions are still in place. If you receive Income Support, Pension Credit Guarantee Credit, income-based Jobseeker's Allowance, income-related Employment and Support Allowance, or qualifying Universal Credit, you pay nothing. If your gross annual income is under £12,000, you pay half: £46 per LPA.

And honestly, even at £92, LPA registration is staggeringly good value when you compare it to what happens without one. A Court of Protection deputyship application costs £371 in court fees alone, plus solicitor bills typically running £2,000 to £5,000, plus ongoing annual supervision charges. Two registered LPAs at £184 total versus potentially thousands in deputyship costs? It's not even close. I've seen families spend more on a single Court of Protection hearing than two LPAs would have cost them at any point in the last decade.

I think the Powers of Attorney Act 2023 is genuinely good news. Faster, safer, more accessible. All of it heading in the right direction. But the reforms are phased, and some of the biggest changes, including full digital creation with electronic signatures, aren't live yet.

Here's where things stand practically. You can make an LPA today using the current system, which is a mix of online form-filling and paper signatures. The OPG will register it and it'll be fully valid under both the existing rules and the new Act. There is zero advantage to sitting around waiting for the digital system to launch, and there are real risks to putting it off. I've written about this before and I'll say it again: mental capacity isn't something you can schedule. You have it until you don't, and by then it's too late.

If you're considering an LPA, do it now. The current process works. Registration takes a few weeks. Once it's done, you've got a legal safety net that doesn't expire. When the digital features arrive, your registered LPA will slot right into them, including the "Use an LPA" service for sharing verification with banks and other organisations.

If you already have an LPA, make sure your attorneys know about the digital verification service. Make sure certified copies are stored somewhere safe. And, this is the bit people skip, review whether the people you named are still the right choices. Life changes. Relationships shift. An LPA you made ten years ago might name an attorney who has since moved abroad, become unwell themselves, or, let's be honest, someone you no longer trust. None of that automatically invalidates the document, but it might mean the protection it gives you is weaker than you assume.

At Keystone Estate Planning, our online LPA service walks you through the whole process with plain-language questions at every step. You pick your attorneys, set your preferences, and we produce the finished LPAs ready for signing and OPG registration. When the fully digital channel arrives, we'll be ready for that too.

Please note: Keystone Estate Planning is an estate planning service, not a law firm. We don't provide legal advice. If your situation involves tricky legal questions about the Powers of Attorney Act 2023 or how it affects your existing arrangements, I'd recommend speaking to a solicitor who specialises in mental capacity law.