£92 now, or £432 plus £320 a year later
Those two figures are the financial core of this comparison. Registering a lasting power of attorney (LPA) costs £92 per document on GOV.UK, paid once. If no LPA exists when mental capacity is lost, the fallback is a deputyship order from the Court of Protection: a £432 application fee, a possible £266 hearing fee, a £100 new-deputy assessment fee, and then an annual supervision fee of up to £320 for as long as the order runs. The money is only half the story. An LPA lets you choose who acts for you; a deputyship hands that choice to a judge, after a wait during which nobody can lawfully run your affairs at all.
The rule that drives everything else is timing. An LPA can only be made while the person still has capacity. GOV.UK's LPA guidance states that you must be 18 or over and have mental capacity, the ability to make your own decisions, when you make your LPA. Once capacity is gone, that door is closed permanently, and the Court of Protection route is the only one left. This article compares the two side by side for England and Wales. It is general information to help you understand the options, not legal or financial advice for your own situation.
The one-line distinction
An LPA is a legal document a person (the donor) signs in advance, appointing one or more attorneys of their choosing to make decisions for them if they later cannot. There are two types: property and financial affairs, and health and welfare. A deputyship is a court order made after capacity has already been lost, in which the Court of Protection appoints a deputy, who may or may not be the person the family would have picked, to make those decisions under ongoing supervision.
Put bluntly: the LPA is the planned route, chosen by you; the deputyship is the emergency route, chosen for you. Everything else, cost, speed, control and paperwork, flows from that difference.
Side by side: LPA vs deputyship
| Lasting power of attorney | Deputyship | |
|---|---|---|
| When it is set up | While the donor still has capacity | After capacity has been lost |
| Who chooses the decision-maker | The donor picks their own attorneys | The Court of Protection appoints a deputy |
| Upfront cost | £92 per LPA (£184 for both types) | £432 application, plus £266 if a hearing is needed, plus £100 new-deputy assessment fee |
| Ongoing cost | None | Annual supervision fee, £320 general or £35 minimal, plus security bond premiums for property and affairs deputies |
| Typical timescale | 8 to 10 weeks to register if the forms are correct | Usually several months from application to order |
| Reporting duties | No routine reporting | Annual report to the Office of the Public Guardian |
| Health and welfare decisions | Covered if a health and welfare LPA is made | Rarely granted; the court prefers to decide specific issues itself |
Fee reductions exist on both routes for people on low incomes or certain benefits: the LPA fee can be reduced or waived where the donor earns under £12,000, and the deputyship fees have a similar exemption and remission scheme based on the benefits and income of the person the order concerns. The figures above are the standard fees listed on GOV.UK as at July 2026.
What losing capacity without an LPA actually looks like
Consider two brothers, Daniel and Ross, whose father Ken, 79, is admitted to hospital after a series of strokes and is assessed as lacking capacity to manage his finances. Ken never made an LPA. His pension is paid into a sole-name account. His house needs insurance renewed, his care home contract needs signing, and the fees need paying.
Neither son can do any of this. Being next of kin confers no legal authority over Ken's money. The bank, correctly, freezes meaningful activity on the account. So Daniel applies to the Court of Protection to become his father's property and affairs deputy: £432 application fee, medical evidence of Ken's capacity from a practitioner, notification of relatives, and a wait that runs for months while the care home invoices stack up. Because Ken's estate includes a house and savings, Daniel must also take out a security bond before the order is issued, and once appointed he pays the £100 assessment fee, files an annual report to the Office of the Public Guardian, and pays £320 a year in general supervision fees for the rest of Ken's life.
Over five years, the family pays £432 + £100 + (5 × £320) = £2,132 in court and supervision fees alone, before bond premiums and any professional help with the application. Had Ken registered both LPAs while he was well, the total would have been £184, once, and Daniel could have acted from the day the hospital confirmed his father could no longer cope. The gap is not just elevenfold on fees; it is months of delay at exactly the moment the family has least bandwidth to deal with it.
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Control: who decides who decides
The cost gap gets the headlines, but the control gap matters more to most families. With an LPA, Ken would have chosen his attorneys, decided whether they act jointly or independently, and could have left preferences and instructions in the document itself. With a deputyship, the court decides. It usually appoints a willing and suitable family member for property and affairs, but it does not have to, and where relatives disagree, or the estate is complicated, it can appoint a professional deputy, typically a solicitor whose charges come out of the estate, or the local authority.
Health and welfare is starker still. The court grants standing health and welfare deputyships only rarely, preferring to rule on specific questions (where someone should live, whether a particular treatment should proceed) as they arise. In practice, a family that never put a health and welfare LPA in place often finds that day-to-day care decisions rest with social services and clinicians under the Mental Capacity Act's best-interests framework, with the family consulted but not in charge. A registered health and welfare LPA is effectively the only way to guarantee that a person you chose holds that role.
The supervision that never ends
A deputyship is not a one-off transaction. Deputies operate under the Office of the Public Guardian's supervision for the life of the order. That means an annual report accounting for every significant decision and the money spent, the annual supervision fee (£320 for general supervision, or £35 minimal supervision for some property and affairs deputies managing under £21,000, per GOV.UK's deputy fees page), and maintenance of the security bond. Attorneys under a registered LPA carry the same legal duty to act in the donor's best interests, and can be investigated if concerns arise, but there is no routine reporting, no annual fee and no bond.
None of this makes deputyship a bad institution. For adults who never had capacity, or people who lose it suddenly with no planning in place, the Court of Protection is the safety net, and its supervision exists precisely because deputies were never chosen by the person themselves. The point of the comparison is simply that the supervised route is the default you inherit by not acting, and the lighter, cheaper, self-chosen route is only available in advance.
Can you still make an LPA after a diagnosis?
Often, yes. Capacity is decision-specific and assessed at the time the decision is made, so a diagnosis of dementia does not by itself mean a person can no longer make an LPA. What matters is whether they can understand, retain and weigh the information relevant to appointing an attorney at the moment they sign. In the early stages many people can, which makes the window after diagnosis one of the most important, and most commonly missed, opportunities in the whole planning timeline. Where there is any doubt, a capacity assessment from a GP or specialist at the time of signing gives the document real protection against later challenge; our guide to mental capacity, dementia and will validity covers the same principle as it applies to wills. Questions about whether someone had capacity when a document was signed are for professionals to assess, not for family members to assume either way.
Putting the LPA in place
The mechanics are deliberately accessible: forms can be completed online or on paper through GOV.UK's LPA service, a certificate provider confirms the donor understands what they are signing, and the Office of the Public Guardian registers the document in 8 to 10 weeks if there are no mistakes. Registering both types together costs £184 and covers the two halves of life a deputy would otherwise struggle to reach: money and property on one side, health and welfare on the other. An LPA also does nothing until it is needed; making one is not handing over control, it is deciding in advance who gets it if the day comes.
An LPA is one piece of a fuller plan that usually includes an up-to-date will, and the two are commonly done together. Our making a will checklist shows what a complete estate plan covers and where an LPA fits, our lasting power of attorney pillar guide goes deeper on attorneys' powers and duties, and if you are weighing up how an LPA relates to what happens after death, see our explainer on power of attorney vs probate. If your family is already past the point where an LPA is possible, or you are unsure whether capacity remains, this is exactly the situation an estate planning or Court of Protection specialist handles: they can assess which route is open, prepare the application properly, and take the court process off your plate while you concentrate on the person at the centre of it.