Lasting Power of Attorney delays and Mortgages
Money Box
BBC
4.2 • 825 Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2023
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Office of the Public Guardian has told Money Box it apologises to its customers for the distress caused by delays in dealing with applications for Lasting Powers of Attorney. Its target is turning them round in eight weeks. But its own website says people should expect to wait twenty. It also says it has recruited more staff to process applications and teams have been working around the clock to reduce wait times and are now registering around 18,000 more LPAs a month than before the pandemic. We'll hear from listeners and speak to a legal expert. If you're one of the millions of people who have a mortgage, or indeed would like to get one, you might have struggled to keep up with ongoing changes to the market in the last few months. In the past two weeks nine lenders have started offering fixed term deals at less than 4% while another has doubled the amount borrowers can overpay. We'll look at how they’re affecting new and existing customers.
How should I invest? New research looks at active and passive investing, we'll speak to co-author Professor Crawford Spence of King's College London.
And how can you avoid an huge estimated bill from your energy company?
Presenter: Paul Lewis Reporter: Dan Whitworth Researchers: Sandra Hardial and Jo Krasner Editor: Jess Quayle
(First broadcast 12pm Saturday 18th January, 2023)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about what goes into making one. |
| 0:06.5 | I'm Sadata Sese, an assistant commissioner of podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
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| 0:16.0 | relationships, identity, comedy, even one that mixes poetry, music and inner city life. |
| 0:22.4 | So one day I'll be helping host develop their ideas, the next fact-checking, a feature, |
| 0:28.3 | and the next looking at how a podcast connects with its audience, and maybe that's you. |
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| 0:39.4 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:43.1 | Hello, welcome to this Moneybox podcast. |
| 0:46.1 | On Friday, another mortgage lender began to offer fixed-rate loans at below 4%, |
| 0:50.8 | becoming the ninth to do so in the past two weeks. New research heard from highly |
| 0:56.7 | paid fund managers who admit their investment funds do no better than cheaper ones that follow |
| 1:02.1 | a share index. And if your estimated bill for electricity and gas seems far too high, what can |
| 1:09.0 | you do about it? But first, the Office of the Public Guardian has |
| 1:13.1 | told Moneybox it apologises to its customers for the distress caused by the very long delays |
| 1:18.8 | in dealing with applications for lasting powers of attorney. Its target is to turn them around in |
| 1:24.8 | eight weeks, but its own website says people should expect to wait |
| 1:28.7 | 20. The delays matter because a power of attorney is a legal document handing over that power |
| 1:35.0 | to make financial or health decisions to a close relative or friend, and often the power is needed |
| 1:40.6 | urgently. The experience of some of our listeners is that the long delay is just the |
| 1:45.5 | start of the problems. Moneybox listener Val got in touch after applying for a lasting power |
| 1:50.8 | of attorney more than a year ago. I'm nearly 80 years old and obviously you start to worry about |
... |
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