How to Register an LPA with the OPG

A signed LPA is not yet a usable LPA. An LPA only becomes legally effective once it has been registered with the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG), the government body that maintains the official register of powers of attorney in England and Wales. Until registration is complete your attorneys cannot act on the document, no matter how carefully it was drafted and signed. If you have not yet reached this stage, our LPA signing process guide walks you through getting every signature in the correct order first. If you are still deciding whether you need one at all, start with what is a Lasting Power of Attorney.

The registration process step by step

Registration is essentially the OPG checking your signed LPA, confirming it meets every legal requirement, giving the people named in it a chance to object, and then adding it to the official register. From start to finish it looks like this:

1. You (or an attorney) complete the application section of the signed LPA and post the original to the OPG with the fee or a fee-exemption form.
2. The OPG carries out its initial checks to confirm the form has been completed and signed correctly.
3. The OPG notifies the donor, the attorneys and any “people to be told” named in the LPA that registration has begun.
4. A statutory four-week waiting period runs, during which an objection can be raised.
5. If there are no valid objections, the OPG registers the LPA, stamps every page and returns the original to you.

The whole journey typically takes around 20 weeks from the day the OPG receives a correctly completed application. We explain why it takes so long in our guide to how long an LPA takes to register.

Who can apply to register

Either the donor (the person the LPA is for) or an attorney can apply to register the LPA. There is a dedicated application section near the end of the form where the applicant signs to confirm they want to register the document.

In most families it is sensible to register as soon as the LPA has been signed, while the donor still has full mental capacity, rather than leaving it in a drawer until it is needed. Registering early means the document is ready the moment it has to be used, and any error is caught while there is still time to fix it easily. If you appointed more than one attorney to act “jointly and severally” or “jointly”, any one of them can submit the registration application on behalf of the others.

What documents to send to the OPG

You must send the original signed LPA — the LP1F for a Property & Financial Affairs LPA, or the LP1H for a Health & Welfare LPA — not a photocopy. With it you enclose either the registration fee or, if you are claiming a reduction or exemption, the completed fee-remission form LPA120A together with your evidence. Post everything to:

We recommend recorded or special delivery so you have proof of postage, and keep a photocopy of every page before you send the originals. If you are registering both LPA types, you can put them in the same envelope but each needs its own fee.

How to pay the £82 fee

The OPG charges £82 per LPA to register. If you are registering both a Property & Financial Affairs LPA and a Health & Welfare LPA, the total fee is £164 because each document is charged separately. There are three ways to pay:

• By cheque — made payable to “Office of the Public Guardian” and posted with your forms.
• By card over the phone — after the OPG receives your application they can call you, or you can call them, to take a debit or credit card payment.
• Online — if you build your LPA through the government’s digital service the fee can be paid online as part of the application.

For a full breakdown of what the fee covers and how it is set, see our explainer on the OPG registration fee.

Fee remission and exemption

Nobody should be priced out of protecting themselves. If the donor’s finances are limited, the £82 fee can be halved or waived entirely. Both reductions are claimed on the same form — LPA120A — which you post with the LPA along with the supporting evidence.

Our detailed guide to LPA fee exemptions and reductions works through the eligibility rules and the evidence the OPG expects to see.

What the OPG does with your documents

When your envelope arrives, the OPG opens an application and runs a series of checks. It confirms that the donor, certificate provider, attorneys and any replacement attorneys have all signed, that the signatures and witnessing are dated in the legally required order, and that the form contains no defects that would make it invalid. It also checks the fee or the exemption evidence. Only once the application passes these checks does the formal four-week waiting period begin.

If the OPG spots a problem at this stage it will write to you rather than register a faulty document, so a clean application is the single biggest thing within your control to keep the timeline on track.

The 4-week waiting and objection window

By law the OPG must wait a minimum of four weeks before it can register the LPA. At the start of this window it notifies the people who must be told: the donor, the attorneys, and anyone the donor chose to list as a “person to be told” in the LPA. This notification is a deliberate safeguard so that those closest to the donor know what is happening.

During the four weeks, anyone can raise an objection. Objections fall into two broad categories. A factual objection covers things like the donor or an attorney having died, the donor and an attorney’s marriage or civil partnership having ended, or an attorney becoming bankrupt — these go to the OPG. A prescribed-grounds objection — for example that the LPA is not legally valid, or that the donor was pressured into making it, or that there was fraud — is made to the Court of Protection. If a valid objection is upheld, the OPG will not register the LPA.

What you get back

If no objection stops it, the OPG registers the LPA and posts the original back to you. The registered document is unmistakable: every page is stamped to show it is registered, typically with a perforated stamp and a “VALIDATED-OPG” mark, and the front sheet carries the registration date and a unique reference number. Banks, care providers and other organisations will look for these stamps before they accept the LPA, so a copy that does not show them will not be honoured.

What to do if registration is rejected

If the OPG finds an error it cannot accept, it returns the LPA and explains exactly what is wrong. The most common reasons are a missing signature, dates that show the document was signed in the wrong order, an incomplete certificate provider statement, or a correction that was made without being initialled. None of these is fatal — they simply have to be put right.

Some minor issues can be corrected on the existing form; others mean re-printing and re-signing the affected pages in the proper order and posting the corrected document back. There is usually no additional fee to resubmit a corrected application, but the processing clock effectively starts again, which is why getting the signing order right first time is so valuable.

How to check your application status

Because processing takes around 20 weeks, it is normal to hear nothing for a long stretch after the initial acknowledgement. If you do want an update, you can contact the OPG by phone or email and quote your reference number to ask how your application is progressing. It helps to have noted the date you posted the forms; sending them by recorded delivery gives you proof of exactly when the OPG received them, which is the date the timeline runs from.

Once your LPA comes back registered, keep the original somewhere safe and give certified copies to your attorneys, your bank, and — for a Health & Welfare LPA — your GP, so the document is ready the moment it is needed.

Frequently asked questions