Lasting Power of Attorney

We understand the significance of planning for the future, especially when it comes to important decisions regarding your health, welfare, and financial affairs.

What is a Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA)?

A lasting power of attorney (LPA) is a legal document that lets you (the ‘donor’) appoint one or more people (known as ‘attorneys’) to help you make decisions or to make decisions on your behalf.

It gives you more control over what happens to you if you have an accident or an illness and cannot make your own decisions (as you ‘lack mental capacity’).

There are 2 types of LPA, and you can choose to make one type or both:

Health and welfare lasting power of attorney
Property and financial affairs lasting power of attorney

You must be 18 or over and have mental capacity (the ability to make your own decisions) when you make your LPA.

The practice only needs to be informed (process below) should you make a Health and Welfare lasting power of attorney.

Making a lasting power of attorney

Please visit the Gov Website for more information on how to make a lasting power of attorney, HERE.

How to share a lasting power of attorney with the surgery

Sharing your LPA with the surgery ensures that we are aware of the nominated person/s (attorneys) which are able to make decisions on your behalf, should you not have the capacity to do so.

How to share your LPA with us depends on when your LPA was registered.

If the LPA was registered before 1st January 2016, you’ll need to share the paper LPA with us.

If your LPA was registered on or after 1st January 2016, please do not share a paper copy of the LPA with us instead the donor or attorney must use the Gov Service to create an account, HERE

If the LPA was registered on or after 1st January 2016 you can use this service to ask for a new or replacement activation key which you need to create the account.
If the LPA was registered on or after 17th July 2020, your activation key is in the letter you got telling you the LPA had been registered.

Once the account has been made this will generate a secure access code (which is only valid for 30 days, at which point you’ll need to generate another code). This is the code we need you to share with us so that we are able to document this on our system and verify the LPA through the online portal.

Once verified, we will add a warning and a code to the patients record to highlight there is a lasting power of attorney in place should it need to be invoked.

For more information on the whole process visit: