Nearly 130,000 Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) applications have been rejected since 2018, Quilter has revealed.
Freedom of information (FOI) data obtained by wealth manager and financial adviser Quilter showed that there were 777,741 total registered LPA applications during that period with over 20,000 being rejected per year.
The number of applications submitted is still 8% lower than they were during a five-year period pre-pandemic in 2019 when there were 842,778 registered.
Data also revealed that on average it took 91.5 working days to register and dispatch an LPA application.
Rachel Griffin, tax and financial planning expert at Quilter, said: “It is a worry that the number of applications being accepted is still yet to reach the pre-pandemic levels and it’s important that any backlog is tackled as quickly as possible so as many people as possible can put in place an LPA.
“This is one of those tasks that is easy to put off or put to the bottom of the to-do list. However, an LPA can only be registered while you have mental capacity – once you’ve lost capacity it is too late and while we can only hope for the best we should prepare for the worst.”
