Many people who have had recent involvement with the Court of Protection will be aware of the delays. It is currently taking between six and 18 months to see an application through the Court of Protection from start to end.
The delay between first submitting your application and receiving an order or further direction can cause many issues and leave the people involved effectively in limbo. In many cases, a person applying for deputyship is doing so to access the protected party’s funds in order to fund their living expenses. In many such cases, a protected party’s finances and living expenses may be limited in which case a complex and lengthy Court of Protection application is undesirable as legal expenses will increase the longer it proceeds, thus depleting the protected party’s funds even more.
The Small Payments Scheme
The Ministry of Justice is aware of this and is suggesting new legislation is put in place to allow third parties the ability to access funds of a protected party as needed. The proposed framework is set out in consultation and has been labelled the Small Payments Scheme. It is hoped the scheme will be simple and quick to put into effect but is only to be used as an interim measure, not a replacement for LPA’s and deputyships. The scheme in action is proposed as below:
- Payments from one account permitted for a six month period;
- Payments allowed up to a value of £2,500;
- There shall be one permitted extension for a period of six months providing the value of £2,500 had not been reached;
- The same account could not be accessed by another individual and one individual will only have access to one account;
- The scheme will be run by the financial services firm and should apply primarily to cash-based accounts; and
- Applicants should prove their suitability and will be asked to consider applying to the Court of Protection for deputyship if access is needed for longer terms.
The proposals, as above, could be very beneficial in preventing any limits to a protected party during deputyship applications. With one permitted extension, a total period of 12 months may be enough to see through a deputyship application with the Court of Protection and can be used to bridge that gap. The limit placed on the amount – and of course, the supervision from a financial services provider – should hopefully limit the possibility of protected parties being exploited.
On the other hand, the limit of only £2,500 may not be sufficient to meet that person’s needs. In particular, those who need access to funds for care fees can expect that allowance to run out very quickly unless of course an exception is introduced to discount them. The process is also potentially open to abuse by the individual with access to the protected party’s account and of course, where there is a disagreement between the protected party’s relations overspending, this could exacerbate matters.
The scheme also leaves individuals vulnerable to exploitation depending on the financial service provider’s approach. Whilst deputies are supervised by the Office of the Public Guardian, it is not clear whether such a close level of scrutiny will be applied here. It is not clear whether the individual accessing the account would need to account for the money used and if so, who to.
Despite the possible teething problems, the Small Payments Scheme could well provide families with a means of keeping a protected party’s expenses ticking over until an application is dealt with by the Court of Protection and this could benefit a significant number of vulnerable individuals.
How can we help
Stuart Parris is an Associate in our expert Dispute Resolution team.
Should you be affected by a data breach, please do not hesitate to contact Stuart or another member of the team in Derby, Leicester, or Nottingham on 0800 024 1976 or via our online enquiry form.
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