Appointee and Court order Protection

About three years ago my son was living in supportive housing. He was given very little help with his finances and resulted in him receiving a large bill for unpaid accommodation. We were unaware of this. He is unable to manage his money independently, he will spend money on things that are really detrimental to his health and wellbeing. This caused a lot of tension and was very difficult. We were advised by his social worker to ask the council to help and they offered appointeeship. They agreed to this but only if the could apply for deputyship via the COP.

Does anyone have experience having a COP through a council? There seems to have been frequent delays in securing the COP application, and the council have only recently heard back from the court so it is not yet finalised. My son is now in a much more stable position and well supported home, but money is still an issue, and he is unable to manage it independently. It is regulated and he gets a small allowance each day. But he often looks to renegotiate this and it can cause tension with his carers at his accommodation.

My question is - Is there any significant disadvantages having the council in place as the appointed deputy? I am concerned if we become appointees or apply for Deputyship, as my son does not live with us, it will be complicated in tracking and managing his finances, appointments etc as appointees. Allowing the council to do this has meant that everything has been much more settled particularly for us as a family in the past year or so. And much better relationship not focused on him accessing any savings (he only has a small amount and the council only agreed to get involved as it was so stressful for us)
The council have indicated they are happy to transfer the appointeeship to us as his parents.

Thank you for any help or advice you can give.

Hi JMC

I have a friend who works for the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) which amongst other things deals with deputyships and I have - during a social chat today - asked him about your queries about deputyship. The office he works in deals with deputyships in England and Wales.

There are 2 types of deputy, lay deputyship and public authority deputyship. Lay deputies are individuals, typically close family members. Public authority deputies are usually local authorities. There can be more than one lay deputy for the person eg mother and father. If the person who lacks capacity has a public authority deputy however then there can be no lay deputies. I'm not entirely sure from your post whether it has been decided who should be the deputy/deputies for your son.

"My question is - Is there any significant disadvantages having the council in place as the appointed deputy? "

My friend - who deals with lay deputies - says the disadvantage of having a council as deputy is that they can be somewhat "remote" from the person who lacks capacity whereas of course the close relatives will know the person very well, visit them etc. He says it is generally much better for close relatives or friends to be the deputies rather than an "impersonal" public body. It is much more common to have lay deputies and the OPG gives a lot of support to lay deputies so they needn't feel completely on their own, also he has said its not as difficult as people first think to be a deputy for someone, its also quite common for deputies not be living with the person they're a deputy for.

You might perhaps want to contact the council again re all this, especially re the issue as to who wants to be the deputy/deputies. Unfortunately he has also told me that it can take many months for the deputyship to come through from the Court of Protection (COP)! You might also want to take a look at the OPG website at the following link as there's a lot of useful information there:

www.gov.uk/government/organisations/offi...-the-public-guardian

I hope this helps and that all goes well re the deputyship application.

Kind regards

Mr B