The GOV.UK service called Make a lasting power of attorney is, in plain terms, a guided form-filler. It asks you a series of questions, one screen at a time, and turns your answers into a properly worded lasting power of attorney. Our guide to lasting powers of attorney covers what that document does and who needs one. This page covers filling the form in.
The honest surprise is what happens at the end. Filling it in online does not finish it. The service says so on its first page: once the LPA has been completed, it needs to be printed, signed and then posted to the Office of the Public Guardian for registration. The document becomes real on paper, in wet ink, with witnesses. That is not a criticism of the service, which is a good form, but knowing it up front changes how you plan the afternoon.
This service covers England and Wales only. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own systems, forms and registers. If that is where you live, the jurisdictions section of our guide to setting up a lasting power of attorney explains what applies to you instead.
The online service is also not the only way. If you would rather work on paper from the start, or have a solicitor prepare the documents, both routes are covered in the step-by-step section of our main guide. The LPA you end up with is the same whichever way you make it.
The whole thing, in nine steps:
- Create an account. Set up an account on the GOV.UK Make a lasting power of attorney service with an email address and a password. The service saves your answers as you go, so you can stop and come back.
- Choose the type of LPA and enter the donor's details. Choose property and financial affairs or health and welfare. You make one LPA at a time. Then enter the donor's name, date of birth, email address and address.
- Answer the big question for that type. For a property and finance LPA, say when it can be used: as soon as it is registered, or only if the donor loses mental capacity. For a health and welfare LPA, say whether the attorneys or the doctors decide about life-sustaining treatment.
- Add the attorneys, how they decide, and any replacements. Add each attorney with their name, date of birth, email address and address. If there is more than one, say how they should make decisions. Then add replacement attorneys, or continue past the question to say there are none.
- Choose a certificate provider. Name the independent person who will talk the LPA through with the donor and sign to say the donor understands it and is under no pressure. This is the only question the service lets you skip, and skipping it blocks the final step.
- Add people to notify and any preferences or instructions. Name up to five people to be told about the application, if the donor wants any. Then add preferences (things the attorneys should consider) or instructions (things they must or must not do). Both are optional.
- Say who is applying and who the OPG should write to. Choose whether the donor or an attorney applies to register the LPA, and name the correspondent who will receive the registered document and any letters. Choose English or Welsh for correspondence.
- Answer the fee questions and do the final check. Say whether this is a repeat application, then choose from the four fee options. Read the final check page, correct anything wrong using the Change links, and confirm.
- Print, sign in the right order and post it to the OPG. Print the LPA. The donor signs first with a witness, then the certificate provider, then the attorneys and replacements with witnesses, then the applicant. Post the signed original to the Office of the Public Guardian with the fee.
Before You Start: What to Have Ready
The service asks for real details about real people, one screen at a time. Write down the full name, address and date of birth of everyone you plan to name before you begin. With the details beside you, the form itself is the quick part.
Your attorneys, chosen and asked. For each one you need their title, first names, last name, date of birth, email address and full address including postcode. An attorney must be 18 or over and have mental capacity, and for a property and finance LPA must not be bankrupt or subject to a debt relief order. If there is more than one, decide in advance whether they must agree on everything or can act independently.
Replacement attorneys, if you want any. A replacement steps in if an original attorney can no longer act, meets the same requirements, and needs the same details.
A certificate provider, lined up and asked. This is the independent person who confirms the donor understands the document and is not being pressured into it. Do not leave this one to sort out later: the service lets you skip the question, and skipping it is the commonest way an application quietly stalls. More on that below.
People to notify, if the donor wants any. Up to five people who will be told the LPA is being registered and given a chance to raise concerns. Optional, and many donors name nobody.
Email addresses for the account, for the donor and for each person named, alongside their postal addresses.
The fee, or the grounds for paying less. £92 for each LPA as standard, with reduced-fee options for a low income or certain benefits. The full ladder is further down this page.
Creating Your Account
You will find it at lastingpowerofattorney.service.gov.uk, which you can also reach from the power of attorney pages on GOV.UK. It sits behind a sign-in: you set up an account with an email address and a password, and from then on every page carries a small bar along the top, Your details, Your LPAs, Help and Sign out, with the date you last signed in underneath.
The account is what makes this manageable. The service saves the LPA as you progress, so you do not need to do it all in one go, and you can leave a question you are not ready to answer and come back to it, even at the very last page.
One account can hold several LPAs. Both types, and for more than one person, so a couple can work from a single sign-in and an adult child can run their parents' applications from theirs. The dashboard lists them under type headings, property and finance in one group and health and welfare in another. What an account does not do is merge anybody: each donor's LPA is still their own document, with its own reference number and its own fee.
The Journey, Screen by Screen
What follows is the order the service actually asks things in. There is no progress bar and no step counter. Instead a stack of answered questions builds up at the top of every page, each with a status tag and a Change link, so you can always see what you have settled and go back to any of it.
One thing to know about those tags: they are often counts rather than statuses. A row can read "0 people to notify" and look exactly as finished as a row saying COMPLETE. Nothing entered and question answered look alike.
Choosing the type of LPA
The first question is which type you are making: property and financial affairs, or health and welfare. You can only make one at a time.
A small expandable panel here is headed "What if I want to make both types of LPA?", and it is worth opening. It explains that once you have finished this LPA you can reuse the details you have entered to make another one, and that there is an application fee for each LPA. If you intend to make both, that is your route: one after the other, not side by side.
The donor's details
The donor is the person giving the powers away. The service is firm that the donor must be 18 or over, must be able to make their own decisions at the time the LPA is made, and that only the donor can make decisions about their LPA and the people to involve.
Details are entered in a pop-up that opens over the page rather than on a page of its own: title, first names, last name, date of birth in three boxes, email address, three address lines and a postcode. There is a postcode lookup link above the address lines, and a small panel asking whether the donor is known by any other names.
At the foot of the pop-up sits a checkbox that is easy to scroll past: the donor is unable to sign or make a mark on the LPA. Tick it and the service adds an extra sheet so someone can sign on the donor's behalf. Leave it alone if the donor can sign, even shakily.
A practical warning about these pop-ups. The web address does not change when one opens, so the browser's Back button does not close it as you would expect. Use the form's own Save details or Cancel buttons, and the same for everyone else you add later.
When the LPA can be used (property and finance only)
For a property and finance LPA, the next question is when the attorneys may use it. Two answers, and the service is unusually opinionated about them.
- As soon as it is registered, with the donor's consent. The service says most donors choose this because it is the most practical. While the donor still has mental capacity the attorneys can only act with the donor's permission, so the donor stays in control. The service gives its own examples of when that helps: the donor being away on holiday, or having a physical condition that makes it difficult to visit the bank.
- Only if the donor does not have mental capacity. The service warns in its own words that this can make the LPA a lot less useful, because every time the attorneys try to use it they might be asked to prove that the donor does not have capacity.
Both answers are legitimate, and some donors have good reasons for the second. Read that warning properly rather than picking whichever sounds more cautious.
Life-sustaining treatment (health and welfare only)
For a health and welfare LPA this question comes early, and it comes as a surprise: the service asks it before you have named anybody. You are deciding whether to give attorneys a power over life-sustaining treatment before you have typed their names in.
Life-sustaining treatment, as the service defines it, is care, surgery, medicine or other help from doctors that is needed to keep someone alive. The donor must choose one of two options, and neither is pre-selected. There is no "not sure" and no way to decide later.
- Option A. The donor gives their attorneys authority to give or refuse consent to life-sustaining treatment on their behalf.
- Option B. The donor does not give their attorneys that authority. Doctors will make any decisions about life-sustaining treatment, taking into account the donor's best interests and, where possible, the views of others involved in the donor's welfare, such as their attorneys and family members.
The part worth sitting with
Option B is not "nobody decides". Choosing B does not leave a gap. It leaves the decision with the clinical team, who must still act in the donor's best interests and still listen to the people around them where they can. The real choice is between the attorneys holding the final word and the doctors holding it.
There is no wrong answer here, and nothing needs deciding today. Donors choose both options for good reasons. If this is the question that has stopped you, close the laptop: the service keeps everything you have entered, and the answer will still be there when you are ready.
If the donor wants Option A but with conditions attached, those go in the preferences and instructions section, several screens later. It is easy to make the big decision here and forget to qualify it there, so make a note.
This page also carries a warning about signing that belongs to it alone. After the LPA is printed, the donor must sign and date the option they have chosen, and that signature must be witnessed. The witness signs too, and prints their full name and address. If they do not, the OPG cannot register the LPA and the donor may have to pay the application fee again.
Your attorneys, and how they decide
Attorneys are the people appointed to make decisions on the donor's behalf. The service sets out the rules plainly: a donor can have one or more, they must be 18 or over, and they must have mental capacity. For a property and finance LPA, an attorney must not be bankrupt or subject to a debt relief order. Above all, it says, they should be people the donor can trust to respect their wishes and act in their best interests.
There is no "save and continue" on this screen until at least one attorney exists. The only way forward is Add an attorney, which opens the same style of pop-up used for the donor, asking for name, date of birth, email address and address.
If the donor names more than one attorney, the service then asks how they should make decisions: together on everything, independently, or a mixture. A single-attorney application never sees that question. Our guide to lasting powers of attorney explains what jointly and jointly and severally mean in practice, and why the choice matters more than it looks.
Replacement attorneys
Replacement attorneys step in if an original attorney can no longer act. They must meet the same requirements, including being 18 or over.
Watch this screen. It offers two green buttons of equal weight: Add replacement attorney, and Save and continue. There is no "no thank you" option, because Save and continue is the no. Press it and the answer is recorded as "there are no replacement attorneys". That is a real decision, worth making on purpose: if the only attorney can no longer act and no replacement was named, the LPA stops working, and a new one can only be made while the donor still has capacity.
The certificate provider
This is the step that decides whether the application finishes, so it gets the fullest treatment here.
Every LPA must have a certificate provider: an independent person who helps to protect the donor's interests. Before the donor signs, they must discuss the LPA with the donor, to make sure the donor understands it and the power it gives their attorneys, and that no one is putting the donor under pressure. The service asks for someone who can have an honest conversation with the donor, who speaks out if anything is wrong, and who is independent. They sign the LPA after the donor.
The eligibility rules are strict, and the service says so in a warning box: if you do not follow them, your LPA will not be registered. In outline, a certificate provider must be 18 or over and have mental capacity, and must be either:
- someone who has known the donor personally for at least two years, such as a friend, a neighbour or a colleague; or
- a professional with the relevant skills, such as a GP or a solicitor.
They cannot be an attorney or replacement attorney on this LPA, a member of the donor's or an attorney's family, a business partner or employee of the donor or an attorney, or anyone running or working in a care home where the donor lives. The service keeps the full list behind an expandable panel headed "Rules on who can and cannot be the certificate provider", worth opening before you name anyone.
The one question that can stop you finishing
This is the only question in the whole journey that offers Skip this question for now, sitting quietly next to the green button. It reads like a kindness, and in one sense it is: you may genuinely not have asked anyone yet. But a skipped certificate provider is the only thing that quietly blocks Confirm at the end.
Nothing warns you at the moment of skipping. If you take the skip, write yourself a note. Better still, have the conversation with your chosen person before you start, and answer the question when it comes.
A skipped row in your answer stack reads "Certificate provider not added", tagged NOT STARTED, in the same visual weight as every completed row. Several screens later, the preferences page tells you cheerfully that you have entered all the essential information needed for the LPA, while the certificate provider is still not started. Then at the very last page the missing name appears in red and the Confirm button is greyed out, with a note that when you have chosen a certificate provider you will be able to continue.
People to notify
The donor can choose up to five people to be notified about the LPA application, and they get a chance to raise concerns before it is registered. It is optional, though many donors choose family members or close friends, and passing the screen with nobody named is a perfectly normal answer.
One detail catches people out: you notify them, not the OPG. The service gives you a form to download and send to each person once you have finished making the LPA. It is a small postal chore that sits on your list after everything else, and easy to assume happens automatically. Once the application to register has been made, anyone named has three weeks to raise concerns with the OPG.
Preferences and instructions
This optional screen is where the donor can say something about how they want their attorneys to behave. The service splits it in two, and the distinction is carried entirely by the verbs.
- Preferences are things the donor would like their attorneys to think about when making decisions. The service tells you to use words like "prefer" or "would like". They are guidance, not orders, and attorneys are not bound by them.
- Instructions are things the attorneys must or must not do. Use words like "must" or "have to". These are binding, which is exactly why they need care: an instruction that turns out to be impossible or unlawful can cause problems with the whole document.
The examples the service offers are useful. For a property and finance LPA, a preference might be about charitable donations or how bank accounts are managed, and an instruction might cover giving gifts, managing investments or taking professional tax advice. For a health and welfare LPA, a preference might be about where the donor would like to live or keeping up exercise, and an instruction might cover diet or medical treatment that fits with their beliefs.
This is also the screen the service worries about most: three separate off-ramps to help sit on one optional screen, and it asks you to read the guidance before writing anything. Free text is where a well-meant sentence can do damage.
Two more things worth knowing. This is where a condition on the life-sustaining treatment choice belongs for a health and welfare LPA, even though nothing on the page mentions it. And leaving both boxes empty is entirely fine: the row still shows COMPLETE, and the final check simply reads "no preferences" and "no instructions". Leaving both blank is a common and perfectly valid answer.
The applicant and the correspondent
Here are the two roles that almost no leaflet mentions, and they are both real.
The applicant is whoever applies to register the LPA. Either the donor or one or more of the attorneys can do it, and the service offers a list generated from the people you have already entered. It makes no difference to the powers in the document; it decides whose name is on the application.
The correspondent is who the OPG writes to. They receive the registered LPA when it comes back, and they are the person the OPG contacts with any questions about the application. It is pre-filled with the applicant and you can change it to anyone, which is genuinely useful if the donor is elderly and an adult child is doing the running around.
The same screen holds two small settings. It asks how the correspondent prefers to be contacted, by post, phone or email, as tick boxes rather than a single choice, so more than one is allowed. And it asks which language should be used in written correspondence, English or Cymraeg. That Welsh-language choice appears here and nowhere else in the journey, so if it matters, do not skim past it.
Between this and the fee questions the service slips in a short research question about who was filling the form in. It is anonymous and has no bearing on the LPA. One of its answers is worth noticing all the same, because it mentions the OPG's Assisted Digital Service: a government-run route for people who cannot use the online service themselves.
The fee questions
Two screens, close to the end.
The first asks whether this is a repeat application, meaning a resubmission of an LPA the OPG did not register the first time, which is charged at a reduced rate. The explanation sits behind a collapsed panel headed "What is a repeat application?", so nothing on the screen tells you there is money involved unless you open it. Open it before you answer. Most people answer no, quite correctly, but anyone resubmitting after a rejection should not answer no out of habit.
The second is the fee itself, and it is the clearest statement of LPA costs anywhere. The service lists four options, with the amount printed under each:
- £0 if the donor currently claims one of a listed set of means-tested benefits and has not been awarded personal injury damages of more than £16,000. That second condition is easy to miss and it is a real disqualifier.
- The service will contact you about the fee if the donor receives Universal Credit. This is the only option with no figure attached, so a Universal Credit claimant cannot learn the cost from this screen.
- £46 if the donor currently has an income of less than £12,000 a year before tax.
- £92 if the donor is not applying for a reduced fee. This is the standard fee, charged per LPA.
There is a link on the screen to fuller guidance on qualifying for a reduction, worth a look if the donor is anywhere near the thresholds. Nothing here needs deciding in a hurry.
The final check
The last screen looks different from everything before it. It is headed Final check: LPA details, and asks you to check that all the details are correct and everyone has agreed to be part of this lasting power of attorney before continuing. Below that sits the whole document as a summary table, every row with its own Change link: the donor, the attorneys, replacements, certificate provider, people to notify, preferences, instructions, who is registering, the correspondent, the repeat-application answer and the fee.
Despite appearances, this is not a payment page. The web address says checkout, which primes you for a card form and a basket, and there is neither. The two things you can do are Confirm and Save for later. The fee is stated, not taken.
Read the table properly. It is the only place the document appears whole rather than as a series of questions, and the last chance to catch a mistyped address or a date of birth with the year wrong. If anything is missing, Confirm is greyed out and the offending row shown in red, which in practice almost always means the certificate provider.
Printing and Signing: The Part That Is Still on Paper
Once you confirm, the LPA is printed and everything that makes it legally real happens away from the screen. The order of signatures is not a formality. Get it wrong and the OPG cannot register the document.
- The donor signs and dates first, with a witness present. Nobody else may sign before the donor. For a health and welfare LPA the donor also signs and dates the life-sustaining treatment option they chose, again witnessed, and that witness must sign and print their full name and address.
- The certificate provider signs next, after the donor and before the attorneys, and only after they have had their conversation with the donor.
- Each attorney and each replacement attorney signs, each with a witness.
- The applicant signs last, the person named as applying to register the LPA.
Everyone signs the same original document. Not a photocopy each, not a scan emailed round, not a digital signature. If your attorney lives two hundred miles away, the paper travels.
Signing on different days is fine, and usually unavoidable. What matters is that the dates run in the right order: no attorney dated before the certificate provider, no certificate provider dated before the donor. There is no clock running, so take your time.
The service has a tool for exactly this worry, tucked away on the dashboard rather than in the form. Each LPA card offers Check signing dates, which confirms the order before you post anything. The warning attached to it appears nowhere in the wizard: if the signing dates are not in the right order, the OPG cannot register the LPA and you may have to pay the application fee again. Run that check. It costs nothing, and it is the simplest way to avoid the one mistake that sends you back to the start.
Registering with the Office of the Public Guardian
The signed original goes to the OPG to be registered. Until it is registered the LPA cannot be used at all, so this last step is the one that actually creates the power.
Who applies. Either the donor or one or more of the attorneys, whoever was named as the applicant. GOV.UK puts it simply: you can apply to register your LPA yourself if you are able to make your own decisions.
The fee. £92 for each LPA, unless one of the reduced-fee options applies. GOV.UK says the fee can be paid by credit or debit card or by cheque. Have both possibilities in mind when you reach the end: either the service asks you for a card, or a cheque goes in the envelope with the papers. Follow whatever the screens and the printed instructions tell you at the time, rather than a guide written earlier.
People to notify. If anyone was named, send them their form once the LPA is made. From the point the application to register is made, they have three weeks to raise any concerns with the OPG.
How long it takes. GOV.UK estimates 8 to 10 weeks to register an LPA if there are no mistakes in the application. In practice a backlog has stretched real-world waits closer to 20 weeks. If yours is taking longer than the published estimate, that is common and does not mean anything has gone wrong.
What comes back. The registered LPA is posted to the correspondent, and the OPG writes to the donor and the attorneys to confirm it has been registered. The online dashboard does not track any of this: its options stop at continuing, checking signing dates, reusing details and deleting, so once the envelope is posted the service has nothing more to tell you. When the document arrives, tell the people who will need it where it lives. An LPA nobody can find is as much use as one that was never made.
Doing Both LPAs, and Doing This as a Couple
Most people who make one type should at least consider the other. A property and finance LPA and a health and welfare LPA cover completely different ground, and having only one leaves the other half of life uncovered.
The service handles this with a feature called Reuse LPA details, on each card on your dashboard. It clones the answers you have already given into a new LPA, so the donor, the attorneys, the certificate provider and the people to notify do not have to be typed in twice. You then answer only what is different, which for a second LPA is mostly the one big question for that type.
There is an unlock point. Reuse only becomes available once you have completed every section up to and including people to notify. An LPA abandoned earlier than that cannot be cloned. So if you know you want both, the efficient route is to take the first one at least as far as the people-to-notify screen before starting the second.
Fees are per LPA, so both types for one person is £184 at the full rate. For a couple who want both types each, that means four LPAs and four fees: £368 at the full rate, less if either of you qualifies for a reduction. Four separate documents, each naming one of you as donor, each signed in its own order, each posted for registration. One account is fine for all four, and the dashboard groups them under type headings with the donor's name on each card, so they do not get muddled.
What About the Fully Digital LPA?
The Powers of Attorney Act 2023 changed the law to allow a fully digital service, one where an LPA could be made, witnessed and registered without paper at all. It has not launched, and no date has been announced. The service described on this page is the one that exists today, and it still ends in print, sign and post.
Nothing you do now is wasted by the digital version arriving later. An LPA made and registered on paper is valid for life, is accepted everywhere, and does not need redoing when the new service appears. Our estate planning checklist sets out where the LPA sits alongside the will and everything else, and our guide to advance decisions and living wills covers the separate document that records treatment you would refuse.