Lasting Power of Attorney resubmission

valiant24

I feel that this must be a common problem, but I can't find mention of it elsewhere:

My mother-in-law registered two Lasting Powers of Attorney (LPAs), Finance and Health.  She only has a state pension so paid the concessionary fee as her annual earnings are less than £12k.

I organised it all for her and sent the forms off.  It took ages to get all the signatures, but we got it done.

A few weeks later the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) wrote and told her she hadn't provided sufficient evidence of earnings to qualify for the reduced rate, and asked for more (I contest this, it's quite difficult to prove a negative, and I think we did demonstrate it, but it's not germane to my question).

I sent the evidence again, by email and post, but the OPG didn't get around to looking at this but returned all the documentation (and the fee). 

There's no option to resubmit the application!!   You have to apply again.  I can do this, but then I am sure that if I send the original, perfectly valid signed forms back this will rejected as the barcode on the forms will not match that of the new application.

So it seems I have to get all the sodding forms signed again!  It will take months, and is a complete waste of time and paper.

Any helpful suggestions please?
Thanks
V

Mands

valiant24 said:

Any helpful suggestions please?
Thanks
V

No, but plenty of sympathy.

My lawyer tells me they have really tightened up recently and are rejecting applications that would previously been accepted. He had a rejection where the witness to the forms had used the wrong date. She'd dated the form 31st of a month which only had 30 days. They realised, crossed through, re-dated and initialled the change. It was rejected.

With the time it takes to get the forms completed, signed and witnessed plus the 20 week processing time there's a lot of us stuck in limbo right now.