Deputyship UK 2026: Cost, Time & How to Apply (Family Guide)

The phone call usually comes from a hospital social worker, or a bank, or a care home admissions team. They need a signature, or a payment, or a decision. You explain that your mum had a stroke last month and is no longer able to make her own choices. The voice on the other end pauses, then asks: "Does your mum have a Power of Attorney?" And you realise — for the first time — that the answer is no, nobody ever set one up.

That's the moment most UK families learn the word "deputyship." It's the legal route the Court of Protection grants when an adult loses mental capacity without a Lasting Power of Attorney already in place. It costs five times more than an LPA. It takes 30 times longer. And it leaves the family in legal limbo for half a year while bills go unpaid, care decisions stall, and NHS funding questions hang unanswered. This is the family guide we wish more solicitors handed out — what deputyship actually is, what it costs, how long it takes, and what you can do while you wait.

TL;DR: Deputyship is the Court of Protection order families apply for when a relative loses mental capacity without an LPA in place. It costs £400 to apply plus £320/yr supervision, takes 4–6 months, and locks the family in legal limbo until the order is granted. If your relative still has capacity, set up an LPA today — at £92 it's a fraction of the cost (GOV.UK, 2026).

What Is Deputyship and Who Needs It?

Deputyship is the legal order, granted under section 16 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005, that authorises one person to make decisions on behalf of another adult who has lost the capacity to make those decisions themselves. It's the after-the-fact equivalent of a Lasting Power of Attorney — the difference is that the Court of Protection chooses the deputy, not the person who needs help. The application fee is £400 in 2026, plus £320/yr ongoing supervision (GOV.UK, 2026).

Two types of deputyship exist, and the court treats them very differently:

• Property & Affairs deputy — handles money, bills, bank accounts, property, and signing care contracts. The vast majority of deputyship orders are this type. Granted relatively routinely where capacity is clearly lost and there's no LPA.
• Health & Welfare deputy — makes decisions about care, treatment, and where the person lives. The court grants these very rarely. Most everyday care decisions are handled case-by-case under section 5 Mental Capacity Act 2005, which gives carers and clinicians a defence when acting in a person's best interests.

The most common trigger for a deputyship application is dementia — a parent's diagnosis arrives, capacity declines faster than the family expected, and nobody got round to setting up the LPA in time. Other common triggers include stroke, traumatic brain injury, and severe learning disability moving from childhood into adulthood. None of these were anyone's fault. But all of them now mean the family is looking at four-to-six months of process before they can sign the next care home contract.

What's the Difference Between Deputyship and an LPA?

An LPA is chosen by the person while they still have capacity, costs £92 to register, and takes 8–10 weeks. A deputyship is appointed by the court after capacity has been lost, costs £400 to apply for plus £320 a year in supervision, and takes 4–6 months (GOV.UK, 2026). Across five years, an LPA costs £92 total. A Property & Affairs deputyship costs £2,000+ — and that's before you account for the family time spent compiling annual OPG reports.

The cost cliff is the fact most families wish someone had told them sooner.

The other distinction matters just as much: an LPA gives the family control over the choice of attorney. Most people pick a spouse, an adult child, or a trusted sibling. A deputyship leaves the appointment to the court — and while the court usually accepts a willing relative, that's not guaranteed in contested or complex cases. If siblings disagree, if there are concerns about a particular relative, or if no family is suitable, the court can appoint a professional deputy from a panel — usually a solicitor — at additional cost that runs into thousands of pounds a year.

How Much Does Deputyship Cost in 2026?

The published OPG fee schedule for 2026 is straightforward, but the all-in cost is higher than the headline number suggests. The application fee itself is £400 (GOV.UK, 2026), and on top of that you'll usually pay a £100 court hearing fee where the case requires one, an annual £320 OPG supervision fee, and a one-off security bond. For estates under £21,000, the OPG supervision fee drops to a "minimal" £35 per year — useful for families managing modest savings rather than property portfolios.

The full fee picture in plain numbers

• Application fee — £400 (GOV.UK, 2026)
• Court hearing fee — £100 (where the case is set down for hearing)
• General supervision fee — £320/year (GOV.UK, 2026)
• Minimal supervision fee — £35/year (estates under £21,000)
• Security bond — £100 typical, scales with the size of the estate
• Capacity assessment — usually free via the GP, occasionally £200–£400 if a specialist is needed
• Optional professional deputy fees — £90–£180 per hour for solicitor-led work

Fee remission is available where the deputy receives certain means-tested benefits, including Universal Credit and Pension Credit Guarantee Credit (GOV.UK Deputy Fee Remission, 2026). This is the most overlooked fact about deputyship costs — many families never apply because they assume the £400+ fees are unavoidable. They aren't.

The hidden time cost of being a deputy

What you don't usually see in the published numbers: the time you'll spend each year compiling the deputy's annual report. Expect a half-day per quarter logging transactions, a full day at year-end, and another half-day filing. Across five years that's roughly six full working days of administrative time on top of the cash fees.

How Long Does a Deputyship Application Take?

Four to six months from submitting the COP1 application to the Court of Protection issuing the order (UK Care Guide, 2026). Complex cases — contested family arrangements, missing or contradictory capacity evidence, large estates — can run beyond six months. The first 30 days are typically taken up with the OPG processing the application bundle and serving notice on family and other interested parties, who have 21 days to object.

What slows applications down most often, in our experience: capacity assessment evidence that doesn't quite meet the OPG's threshold (the GP's certificate is too brief, or describes diagnosis rather than capacity); family disagreements that turn into formal objections; and asset arrangements where the person held property jointly with someone else and the title isn't immediately clear. Each of these can add weeks. A clean application from a single relative with a strong GP capacity certificate and uncomplicated finances usually moves in roughly 16 weeks — toward the lower end of the 4-to-6-month range.

How Do You Apply for Deputyship Step-by-Step?

The Court of Protection requires four core forms — COP1 (the application), COP1A (Property & Affairs supplemental information), COP3 (the medical capacity assessment), and COP4 (a declaration from the proposed deputy) — plus a COP24 witness statement where any third party needs to support the application. Forms are downloadable from GOV.UK, free of charge. The application is filed by post or via the OPG's electronic submission portal, depending on case type.

Five practical steps for DIY filing

1. Get the capacity assessment first. Ask the person's GP for a COP3 — most GPs charge a private fee (£100–£300) for completing it. If the GP isn't comfortable assessing capacity (often the case in early-stage dementia), ask for a referral to the local memory clinic or an old-age psychiatrist.
2. Compile the financial picture. List bank accounts, savings, pensions, property, debts, regular outgoings, and care costs. This becomes the COP1A. The OPG wants to see what you'll be managing.
3. Notify everyone you must. The application requires you to formally notify the person who lacks capacity (yes — even if they can't read it), and any close relatives who have a legitimate interest. They get 21 days to object.
4. File COP1 + COP1A + COP3 + COP4 together. Bundled applications process faster than dribs-and-drabs filings. Pay the £400 application fee or apply for fee remission if eligible.
5. Wait for the OPG to allocate the case. You'll usually hear back within 4–6 weeks with either an order for a paper-based decision or a date for a court hearing.

Some families opt to bring in solicitor support for the application itself; expect £1,500–£3,000 for a straightforward case. For most clear-cut situations — willing relative, capacity uncontested, modest estate — the application is workable as a DIY exercise, especially with the OPG's published guidance. If the case is contested, has unusual asset arrangements, or involves a Health & Welfare element, professional support is generally worth the cost.

What Can You Do While Waiting for Deputyship?

The 4-to-6-month gap between filing and the order being issued is the part of deputyship most family guides skip — and it's the part that causes the most distress. Bills still need paying, care home contracts still need signing, and the bank still won't release funds without authority. There are practical interim arrangements that can keep things ticking over, but most of them require persistence and good-faith engagement from the institutions involved.

Four interim arrangements that sometimes work

• Third-party authority on bank accounts. Some UK banks will grant a relative limited authority to operate an account on humanitarian grounds while a deputyship is pending. Lloyds, Barclays, NatWest and Santander each have published policies — call the bereavement or vulnerable customer team and explicitly ask. Be prepared to share a copy of the COP3 capacity assessment.
• Court of Protection emergency orders. If a decision genuinely cannot wait, you can apply for a single-issue emergency order (a "specific issue" application) under section 16(2)(a). These are heard within days but only granted for genuine emergencies — typically where care funding is about to lapse.
• Section 5 Mental Capacity Act 2005 defence. Carers and clinicians making everyday best-interests decisions are protected by section 5 even without a deputy in place. This covers personal care, medication, and routine accommodation arrangements. It does not cover financial decisions.
• Care home admission consent. Care homes can usually accept a relative's signature on the admission contract under section 5, with the understanding that the deputyship order will follow. Make sure the contract is reviewed carefully — some homes include onerous notice clauses that bind the relative personally rather than the resident's estate.

The harder tasks during the gap are anything involving signed legal documents — selling property, large investment decisions, complex tax matters. Most of these have to wait for the order. Plan for the wait, rather than against it.

Does a Deputy Help With NHS Continuing Healthcare?

A deputy has full standing to apply for, attend, and appeal NHS Continuing Healthcare assessments on behalf of the person they represent — and getting CHC granted is one of the highest-value things a Property & Affairs deputy can do. Average nursing-home costs in the UK now run to roughly £79,820 per year (CareHomeGuide.uk, 2026). A successful CHC application replaces means-tested social care funding with full NHS funding, which means the deputy's biggest monthly admin task — paying care fees from the person's estate — disappears overnight.

How a deputy can unlock CHC funding

• The deputy is the legal representative for all financial and benefits decisions the person can no longer make themselves — including filing or maintaining benefit claims like Attendance Allowance, which most older relatives needing deputyship will also be eligible for
• A CHC checklist screening can be requested by anyone with the person's interests at heart, but a deputy's request carries explicit authority — the ICB cannot dismiss it as informal
• Once a checklist proceeds to a full DST assessment, the deputy is entitled to attend, see the records, and challenge any of the 12 Decision Support Tool domains where they think the score doesn't reflect reality
• If the assessment is refused, the deputy has standing to lodge a CHC appeal and pursue it through Local Resolution and the Independent Review Panel

A particularly important pattern that matters more than most professionals admit: if the person you're a deputy for has been placed under a DoLS authorisation, that authorisation is itself documentary evidence of intensive supervised need — often the same need profile that justifies CHC eligibility. The two systems rarely communicate. The deputy is often the only person in a position to bridge them.

Our finding: We worked with one anonymised family last year — we'll call him Mr B, late-onset vascular dementia, residential care home in the West Midlands — whose adult children took 11 months to obtain deputyship after a sudden second stroke. Within four weeks of the order being granted, the new deputy filed a CHC checklist request. The case progressed to a full DST and Mr B was found CHC-eligible at the next ICB panel. The retrospective claim for the months between the deputyship order and the CHC decision recovered £14,200 of care fees the family had paid in the meantime. None of that conversation could happen until the deputyship was in place. The lesson the family drew: file the deputyship and the CHC checklist in parallel, not sequentially.

If you're a newly-appointed deputy and your relative is in a care home or receiving complex care at home, our free CHC eligibility screener is a five-minute first check on whether a checklist screening is worth requesting. For background on the assessment process itself, see our NHS Continuing Healthcare guide.

What to Do If Your Relative Still Has Capacity

If you're reading this for a relative who is currently showing early signs of capacity loss — but isn't past the threshold yet — the most useful thing you can do today is set up an LPA. The Lasting Power of Attorney process takes 8–10 weeks and costs £92. Comparing that with the £2,000+ five-year cost of deputyship, the £400 application fee, and the 4-to-6-month wait, the case for acting now rather than later is overwhelming.

A prompt-list for the family conversation

• Has the person made a will? (If not, make one alongside the LPA)
• Do they want a Property & Affairs LPA, a Health & Welfare LPA, or both?
• Who do they want to act as attorney — and who as a replacement?
• Are there any decisions they want to exclude from the attorney's authority?
• Is there a certificate provider — someone who can confirm they understand what they're signing — readily available?

The conversation is hard. Almost every family I've worked with describes some version of "we kept meaning to do it." The window in which someone can validly sign an LPA can close fast — particularly with vascular dementia, fast-progressing Alzheimer's, or after a stroke. If you've started worrying about capacity, you're already in the window where action is still possible. That window doesn't usually stay open for long.

Frequently Asked Questions

The five questions families ask us most often about deputyship are answered in the FAQ block at the top of this page (visible to search engines as structured data). They cover the LPA-vs-deputyship distinction, costs, timelines, dementia-specific cases, and what a deputy actually does day-to-day. For broader CHC questions a deputy commonly faces, see our NHS Continuing Healthcare FAQ.

In Summary

• Deputyship is the Court of Protection order families apply for when a relative loses mental capacity without an LPA in place. The statutory basis is section 16 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
• It costs £400 to apply plus £320/yr supervision (£35/yr for estates under £21,000), and takes 4–6 months (GOV.UK, 2026).
• Five-year cost is roughly £2,000+ for a Property & Affairs deputyship — about 22× the cost of a £92 LPA.
• A deputy has full authority to apply for and pursue NHS Continuing Healthcare on behalf of the person they represent. CHC, if granted, eliminates the deputy's biggest financial admin task.
• If the person still has capacity today, set up an LPA now — every week you wait is a week closer to needing the more expensive route.

If you're already past the deputyship threshold and your relative is in a care home or receiving complex care, the next step we'd recommend is a CHC eligibility check. Try our free CHC eligibility screener or read the complete CHC funding guide — both are designed for the deputy or family member who is now the legal voice for someone they care about.

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This guide is reviewed by legal professionals and social care professionals. It is general information for families and does not constitute legal advice for an individual case. Court of Protection applications can be technically demanding; for contested cases or unusual asset arrangements we recommend speaking to a private-client solicitor with Court of Protection experience.