No. You don't need a solicitor for a lasting power of attorney. You can make one yourself and register it with the Office of the Public Guardian for £92. That office took in more than 1.5 million power of attorney applications last year, so you'd be in good company. What a solicitor is really paid for is the half hour that decides whether your document works at all. Who signs it, and in what order. And which of the people you'd naturally ask is barred by law from certifying it.
Get that wrong and the form comes back. Get it right and you've kept £595 or more.
On this page
- The short answer, and the two numbers behind it
- The four rules that decide whether your LPA works
- What happens when the form goes wrong
- What it costs to leave it too late
- When we would pay a solicitor, and when we would not
- Registering it, and how long it really takes
- If you are in Scotland or Northern Ireland
- Frequently asked questions
The short answer, and the two numbers behind it
Two figures decide this. One is the government's fee for putting your document on the register. The other is what a firm charges to fill in the form and post it. They aren't the same kind of money.
What you pay if you do it yourself
Registering one LPA with the Office of the Public Guardian costs £92. Both types, health and welfare as well as property and financial affairs, come to £184 for the pair. The fee rose from £82 on 17 November 2025, so a page or a quote showing £82 is out of date rather than a bargain.
Two discounts exist, and they're worth ten minutes. If the donor's gross annual income is £12,000 or less, the Public Guardian must knock half off, which brings one LPA down to £46. If the donor gets Income Support, income-based Jobseeker's Allowance, income-related Employment and Support Allowance, Pension Credit guarantee credit, Housing Benefit or Council Tax Benefit, the fee goes altogether. Universal Credit sits in a different box. There the rules say the Public Guardian may reduce or remit, not that it must.
One detail catches people out. The income and the benefits that count are the donor's, the person giving the power away, not the attorney's. You apply on the Public Guardian's own remission and exemption form, sent in with the application.
What three solicitors we opened actually charge
We opened the price pages of three firms that publish their fees. Slee Blackwell in Devon and Somerset charges £595 plus VAT for one type of LPA and £695 plus VAT for both. Hodge Jones & Allen in London charges £725 plus VAT for a single LPA. Susan Howarth & Co puts its range at £595 to £995 plus VAT, depending on whether the work covers one person or a couple.
Three firms is a small sample, and we say so. It's still three published prices in one place. Two of the three print the registration fee as £82, which matters when you read a quote: the disbursement line should say £92 now. How we choose and rank the firms we list is set out in who we are and how we score firms.
| What you are paying for | Doing it yourself | Through a solicitor |
|---|---|---|
| Registering one LPA with the Public Guardian | £92 | £92, charged on as a disbursement |
| Registering both types for one person | £184 | £184, charged on |
| The professional's own fee | Nothing | £595 to £995 plus VAT at the three firms above |
| A second application after a correctable mistake | £46, if the Public Guardian allows it inside three months | None of the three firms says who pays it, so ask |
| Reduced fee if the donor earns £12,000 or less | Half off, so £46 for one LPA | The same reduction applies |
The four rules that decide whether your LPA works
Home-made LPAs can be rejected for procedural errors. The form can come back because it was signed in the wrong order or because the wrong person signed the certificate.
Four rules decide it. The regulations set the signing order, who may certify and who may witness what. GOV.UK's guidance gives the separate rule about using one original. The first two get a section each, and the last two share the third.
The order of signatures is fixed by law
Regulation 9 of the 2007 LPA Regulations sets out a chain, and each link has to come after the one before it. The wording is "as soon as reasonably practicable after" the previous step. That's not a nudge about tidiness. It's what executing the form properly means, and the Public Guardian can't register an instrument that wasn't made the way the rules require.
At a kitchen table, this is where families come unstuck. The pen goes round, and somebody signs the certificate first because they have to leave.
- You read the guidance notes in the form, or have them read to you. That comes first, before anybody signs anything.
- You fill in your own sections and sign in front of a witness. On the property and financial affairs form (LP1F) that is section 9. On the health and welfare form (LP1H) it is sections 5 and 9.
- Only then does your certificate provider complete and sign the certificate at section 10. A certificate dated before your signature is out of order.
- Only then do your attorneys read the guidance notes for themselves. Their own statement says they have.
- Only then do your attorneys sign section 11, each in front of a witness. Attorneys may witness each other. You may not witness any signature on your own LPA.
- Every signature goes on the same original paper form. No photocopies, no scans, no electronic signatures.
One more trap sits inside step 2. If somebody signs on your behalf because you can't hold a pen, that signature needs two witnesses.
Who is barred from certifying, and why it catches families
The certificate provider signs to say three things: that you understand what the document does and how far the power goes, that nobody is using fraud or pressure to make you sign, and that nothing else stands in the way of the LPA being created. That's a judgement about you, made by somebody outside the barred relationships. It's the safeguard the whole system rests on.
Two kinds of person can do it. Either somebody who has known you personally for at least two years ending on the day they sign, or somebody whose professional skills make them competent to judge, such as a doctor, a solicitor, a registered social worker or an independent mental capacity advocate.
Then comes the bar list, the part readers search for and rarely find. Regulation 8(3) disqualifies eight categories outright. Being the right sort of friend isn't enough if you fall into one of them.
| Barred from certifying your LPA | Why people are caught by it |
|---|---|
| A member of your own family | Rules out your children, your brother and your spouse. |
| Anyone you are appointing as an attorney in this LPA | The person receiving the power can't certify that you understood giving it away. |
| Anyone already your attorney under another LPA or an enduring power | It counts even if you revoked that earlier power. |
| A member of one of your attorneys' families | Your son is an attorney, so his wife can't sign. |
| A director or employee of a trust corporation acting as your attorney | Bites when a bank or trust company is named. |
| A business partner or employee of yours, or of one of your attorneys | Your bookkeeper, your practice partner, the person behind your counter. |
| An owner, director, manager or employee of the care home you live in when the LPA is signed | The manager who has known you for years still can't sign. |
| A member of that care-home person's family | The bar reaches that person's family, not just the job title. |
Two of those bars do most of the damage. A daughter-in-law who has known you for a decade feels like the obvious choice, and she's barred because she married your attorney. So is the deputy manager of the home where you live, who may know you better than anyone. The certificate has to come from somebody who isn't disqualified, and the law draws a hard line rather than argue case by case. It still stings, and you're right to find it hard.
Red flag: stop and re-check before you post if any of these is true.
- The certificate provider is your sister, your son-in-law, or anybody else related to you or to one of your attorneys.
- The certificate provider works at, manages or owns the care home you live in.
- The certificate is dated before the date beside your own signature.
- Somebody has signed a printed copy rather than the one original everybody else signed.
Nobody can sign a copy, and nobody can sign online
GOV.UK puts it in one line: "Everyone must sign the same original document. They cannot sign copies or use digital signatures." The online service is a form builder. It walks you through the questions and prints a document. It doesn't collect a single signature, and the Public Guardian says signatures can't be witnessed online and must be done in person.
So the original travels, by hand or post, and everybody signs that one piece of paper. If your attorney lives two hundred miles away, build that into your timing.
Witnessing has its own rules. A witness must be 18 or over. You may not witness anything on your own LPA. Your attorneys may witness each other, but not you. An attorney can never double as the certificate provider.
What happens when the form goes wrong
Not every slip is fatal, and the law says so. Some errors the Public Guardian has to overlook. Some cost you another £46 and another wait. Some can only be rescued by a judge.
The mistakes the Public Guardian can wave through
Schedule 1 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 says that if an instrument "differs in an immaterial respect in form or mode of expression from the prescribed form, it is to be treated by the Public Guardian as sufficient". That's a duty, not a favour. It covers only immaterial differences in form or wording.
What it doesn't cover is a missing requirement. An unsigned section, a certificate given by somebody on the bar list, signatures in the wrong order. None of those is a matter of expression. They go to whether an LPA was created at all, and the Public Guardian has no power to wave them through.
The ones that cost £46, and the ones that cost the lot
Where the defect can be put right, GOV.UK says the Public Guardian "may let you correct it and apply again within 3 months for £46". You fix the form, send it back and pay less than a full fee. Note the words "may" and "3 months". It's a concession with a deadline on it, which is why nobody should sit on a rejection letter.
Where the defect goes deeper, the only door left is the Court of Protection. It can treat a document that doesn't match the prescribed form as if it did, but only if it's satisfied the people signing meant to create an LPA. That means a court application. If you paid a firm and the document still won't register, the money is a separate argument, and there's a route for it: how to complain about a solicitor.
You can remove an attorney, but you cannot add one
Once your LPA is on the register, you can't simply rewrite it. If you still have mental capacity, you can remove an attorney with a partial deed of revocation. To add or replace one, you must end the LPA and make a new one at the full fee. That's why fifteen minutes on the signing order is worth more than fifteen minutes choosing between firms.
Your LPA also ends the day you die, and your attorney's authority goes with it. The job passes to your executors, which is where what the banks will release without a grant of probate starts to matter. Estates with a property or a business in them are the ones that end up needing probate and estate administration solicitors.
What it costs to leave it too late
An LPA can only be made while you still have capacity. If capacity goes first, your family has to ask a court for permission to act instead. That's deputyship, and it's a different animal.
The Court of Protection bill, year after year
A deputy is somebody the Court of Protection appoints to make decisions for a person who has lost capacity. The court charges to appoint them, and the Public Guardian charges every year to supervise them.
| What the court or Public Guardian charges | Amount |
|---|---|
| Applying to be a deputy | £432 |
| A hearing, if the court decides your case needs one | £266 |
| Assessment fee for a new deputy | £100 |
| Supervision, every year | £320, or £35 for some property and affairs deputies managing less than £21,000 |
Add the listed fees for a new deputy under general supervision and the first year comes to £852 before any hearing or security bond. You pay the £432 twice if you want both types of deputy. That's more than nine times the £92 you'd have paid to register one LPA, and the supervision fee comes round again every March. One firm puts deputyship at "an annual fee of up to £2,500 to renew the deputyship" without saying what that covers. The official court and Public Guardian charges are the ones above. A professional deputy's bill is a separate thing.
What a deputy can do that an attorney cannot
Less is the short answer. A deputy works to a court order spelling out what they may and may not do, and they go back to the court for anything outside it, including selling a jointly owned property. They file a report with the Public Guardian every year, and they may have to buy a security bond first, a kind of insurance protecting the money they manage.
Personal welfare is narrower still. The court usually appoints a personal welfare deputy only where there's doubt that decisions will be made in someone's best interests, for example because the family disagrees about care. It also appoints one where somebody has to decide a single issue over time, such as where the person will live. Your attorney under a health and welfare LPA needs none of that. You gave them the authority yourself, in advance, for £92.
When we would pay a solicitor, and when we would not
Most pages on this subject end with "it depends on your circumstances". Here is our position instead.
Where the fee is the cheaper option
Sometimes £595 to £995 buys something real. A business or a farm in the estate, where the attorney needs authority to keep trading and a badly drafted restriction can freeze it. Property abroad, which your LPA doesn't reach, because it binds only in England and Wales. A blended family where you can already name the person likely to object. A donor whose capacity is marginal today, where you want a doctor as certificate provider and a proper note of the assessment on file. And the practical one: everybody you'd naturally ask to certify is on the bar list.
If that sounds like you, this is what wills, trusts and estate planning solicitors are for, and a fixed fee for both LPAs is normal to ask for on the phone. Where most of what you own sits in investments and pensions, bring your financial advisers and wealth managers in too. A property and financial affairs LPA hands your attorney the keys to all of it.
Where the free route is genuinely fine
Straightforward finances. A house, some savings, a pension. Attorneys who agree with each other and will still agree in ten years. A friend or neighbour of two years or more who will sit down with you privately and then sign. A printer.
If that's you, use the government service and keep the money. We'd rather you spent an unhurried evening on the signing order than £700 on somebody else filling in your address. Read the form, get the sequence right, check your certificate provider against the bar list, and post it.
We are not your solicitor, though, and if your affairs are complicated in any of those ways, a paid hour is money well spent.
Registering it, and how long it really takes
An unregistered LPA is a piece of paper. Your attorney can do nothing with it. Registration takes longer than people expect, so it isn't something to leave until the diagnosis.
Who you have to tell, and what they can do
If you named people to be told, you must send each of them form LP3 before you apply. They then have three weeks to raise concerns. The online service fills those forms in for you.
Being told isn't a veto. A person you notified can object to the Public Guardian only because a listed event has already affected the power or an attorney's appointment. Bankruptcy affects only a property and financial affairs LPA. Divorce or dissolution matters only when the attorney is the donor's spouse or civil partner and the LPA doesn't preserve the appointment. A prescribed objection goes to the Court of Protection, on one of three grounds in the regulations. That a requirement for creating an LPA was not met. That the power has ended some other way. Or that fraud or pressure was used on you, or the attorney is acting outside their authority or against your interests.
So a relative who simply dislikes your choice has no ground. The rest of the wait is built in. The Public Guardian must let four weeks run from its own notices before it can register, and GOV.UK says the whole thing takes 8 to 10 weeks when there are no mistakes. Its target is 40 working days, and last year it averaged 45, about nine weeks.
The reform that is passed and not in force
You may have read that LPAs are going digital. The Powers of Attorney Act 2023 is on the statute book, and it rewrites how LPAs are registered and how the Public Guardian checks them. Almost none of it is in force. Section 1 and the whole Schedule were prospective at Royal Assent and remain so.
The one substantive change in force commenced on 18 November 2023. Section 2 added chartered legal executives to the people who may certify a copy of a power of attorney. It changes nothing about how you make your LPA.
If you are in Scotland or Northern Ireland
An LPA is a creature of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and binds only in England and Wales. The other two nations run their own systems, so a form downloaded from the GOV.UK LPA pages is the wrong form.
In Scotland, powers of attorney sit under the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000 and are registered with the Office of the Public Guardian (Scotland). One difference matters here. The Scottish certificate has to be signed by a solicitor registered to practise in Scotland, a practising member of the Faculty of Advocates, or a UK-registered doctor holding a licence to practise. A friend of two years isn't an option north of the border, so a professional is part of the process by design.
Northern Ireland still uses enduring powers of attorney under a 1987 Order. They cover property and financial affairs rather than health and welfare. Your attorney registers the power with the High Court, through the Office of Care and Protection, only once they believe you can no longer manage your affairs. Start at nidirect for the current forms.
Frequently asked questions
Can I make a lasting power of attorney without a solicitor?
Yes. You can make and register an LPA yourself through the government service or on paper forms, and it costs £92 per LPA. A solicitor is optional. What isn't optional is getting the signing order right, choosing a certificate provider who isn't disqualified, and putting every signature on the same original document.
Who cannot be a certificate provider for an LPA?
Eight categories are barred outright. Your own family. Anyone you're appointing as an attorney. Anyone already your attorney under another LPA or enduring power, revoked or not. An attorney's family member. A director or employee of a trust corporation acting as attorney. A business partner or employee of yours or of an attorney. Anyone who owns, runs or works at your care home, and that person's family.
Can a family member be my certificate provider?
No. A family member of yours is disqualified, and so is a family member of any of your attorneys. That rules out the son-in-law and the daughter who have known you all their lives. Pick a friend or neighbour who has known you personally for at least two years, or pay a professional such as your GP.
What happens if I make a mistake on the form?
It depends on the mistake. The Public Guardian must treat an immaterial difference from the prescribed form as sufficient. A real defect, such as a missing signature or a disqualified certificate provider, is another matter. Where OPG allows a correction you reapply within three months for £46. Where it doesn't, only the Court of Protection can save the document.
How long does it take to register a lasting power of attorney?
GOV.UK says 8 to 10 weeks when there are no mistakes in the application. Part of that is fixed by law: the Public Guardian has to wait four weeks from its notices before registering. Its own target is 40 working days, and last year it averaged 45 working days, roughly nine weeks. Mistakes can make the process take longer.
What happens if I lose capacity before I make one?
Then nobody can make one for you, because you need capacity to give the power away. Your family applies to the Court of Protection to be appointed your deputy instead: £432 to apply, £100 for a new deputy's assessment and up to £320 a year in supervision. It is slower, narrower, and keeps costing while the deputyship lasts.