» Prior Options
» Protection and Receivership
» Trust Work
» Court Funds Office
» Investment Work
» Stakeholder Relations
» Support Services
The current PTO should cease to exist as a separate Executive Agency although the need for its functions to be performed as the responsibility of Ministers still remains. Responsibility for the Court Funds Office should pass to the Court Service and the Official Solicitor's Office should become responsible for Protection, Receivership and Trust work. (para 21)
Specialist client services should not be provided by PTO staff but by appropriate private, not-for-profit and public sector organisations under contract. Principal amongst these might be Trust and Receivership work done by solicitors; all fund management done by the private financial sector; visiting Court of Protection patients by charities, Local Authorities and the Benefits Agency and collection of receivers. annual accounts by the Inland Revenue. (para 22)
The main role of PTO staff should be to regulate quality control, monitor and analyse the performance and delivery of services to their clients. (para 22)
The Public Trustee building should eventually be sold by LCD for commercial redevelopment. (para 26)
LCD should complete their considerations of Agency monitoring and corporate liaison as a matter of urgency and build on the clear improvements already in hand. (para 41)
In partnership with the Law Society and a range of suitable charities, the LCD should ensure there is a continuous public awareness campaign to familiarise people with the Court of Protection. s responsibilities for those who are mentally incapable of managing their own financial affairs. (para 45)
With the Law Society and relevant charities, LCD and the PTO should review the current Enduring Powers of Attorney (EPA) arrangements in order to improve them and remove the existing scope for fraud and abuse. (paras 46 and 48)
Using the same partnerships as for the Court of Protection. s responsibilities, LCD should ensure a continuous public awareness campaign about the scope and purpose of EPAs when the necessary legislative improvements have been effected. (para 46)
A new Registering Authority for EPAs should be set up as a discrete business unit within the Official Solicitor's Office. (para 49)
The PTO should work up a service level agreement with the Inland Revenue or, failing this, the Probate Service to allow all prospective private receivers to be interviewed (either face to face or by telephone) by one of their staff before the receivership application is considered by the Court of Protection. (para 51)
The maximum level of assets which a patient holds before they are liable to full Court of Protection jurisdiction should be reviewed every three years and updated as appropriate. (para 54)
Over the next 12 months the PTO should review every case with assets of less than £10,000 and, wherever possible, commend to the Court the discharge of that receiver. (para 55)
The PTO should regularise current arrangements into a mutually satisfactory partnership with the Local Government Association whereby, for patients in their care with simple and straightforward financial circumstances, someone from that Authority assumes the responsibility of being a receiver. (para 58)
The PTO and the DSS. s Benefits Agency should regularise the arrangements between the latter. s Agents and Appointees and the Court. s private receiver appointments to minimise Receiverships. (para 58)
The PTO should exercise Receivership responsibility via a contractual arrangement, devised in conjunction with the Law Society and regularly reviewed, to provide the service via local solicitors, rather than providing it directly by its own staff. (para 59)
Solicitors. fees for Receivership services should be devised and periodically reviewed on the basis that they offer a reasonable return for the duties involved but are defendable to clients and the taxpayer. (para 60)
A simple, viable and auditable system of fees should be worked out for the PTO's services, utilising comparable experience in other LCD Agencies. (para 63)
For those people who fall below an agreed limit of having the capacity to pay for Protection, Receivership or Trust work, this support should be declared an essential public service and provided for as such. (para 63)
LCD should start factoring in to their Comprehensive Spending Review the cost of providing Protection, Receivership or Trust services to people who have no assets to pay for them. (para 64)
The PTO should commence discussions to try to establish a service level agreement with the Inland Revenue to provide a receiver. s annual account submission system. (para 68)
The PTO should commence discussions to try to establish agreements with those charities who might be willing to offer receivers help and advice on accounts completion. (para 69)
The PTO should explore the possibility of getting the insurance company who have issued a security bond to cover a private receiver against the risk of their misusing a patient. s funds, to write them a warning letter if their annual accounts are seriously overdue. (para 70)
If the Inland Revenue carries out the annual account submission exercise, its responsibility should only extend to logging their receipt. (para 72)
All private receivers should be required to submit a final account after the death of the patient whose affairs they were administering, unless a very short period of time had elapsed since the previous account eg one month. (para 74)
The Court of Protection should require all private receivers to take out a security bond to protect the patient. s financial assets and confirm that all professional receivers have full indemnity. (para 77)
The PTO should open the insurance bond broker's service up to an open competition, subject to all current best practice guidelines. (para 78)
The PTO should cease to directly provide a visiting service for the Court of Protection and move to a contract management role, having established service level agreements for this work with for example appropriate charities, Local Authorities and the Benefits Agency. (para 86)
All new private receivers should be visited on behalf of the Court of Protection within six months of being appointed; all patients who have had a Receivership arrangement made for them should receive a visit every year; all patients requiring a special non-medical visit should receive it within, say, four weeks, and all other Protection Division patients should be subject to visits on an annual, random basis in sufficient numbers to provide an acceptable degree of assurance that the Court of Protection's responsibilities are being properly discharged eg 10% per year. (para 86)
Assuming an acceptable service level agreement can be agreed, the Benefits Agency should do all special non-medical visits commissioned by the Court, as well as the routine visits where no preference has been expressed by the receiver. (para 87)
The Court of Protection and the PTO should clarify the precise purpose of all types of visits, bearing in mind the developments that will flow from the implementation of the Consultation Paper "Who Decides?". (para 88)
The PTO should submit an annual report to the Court of Protection covering the main findings from each year's visiting programme and use it as a basis for helping the Court to consider amending its processes. This should feature in its own Annual Report (para 89)
The various service level agreements for visiting work should be reviewed twice yearly at senior management level by the PTO and all organisations involved. (para 90)
Receivers should be told initially and then regularly reminded of the Court. s visiting programme, including the fact that a proportion of private receivers will be visited on a random basis every year. (para 91)
The Master and Assistant Masters of the Court of Protection should meet with the relevant Directors and Chief Executive of the PTO and senior LCD HQ officials to thoroughly consider all the implication of the PAC's findings and the agreed recommendations of this Review. An agreed implementation programme should be made the responsibility of the PTO. s Director for Change. (para 95)
The Court of Protection, LCD and PTO should explore all scope for amending the terminology covering the Court. s responsibilities to remove any stigma and avoid archaic and off-putting terms. They should also explore the possibility of placing the Court of Protection within the Family Division of the High Court (para 96)
The Court of Protection should produce a short annual summary of its work, including the executive and administrative support given to it by the PTO, with examples of particular difficulties that have either been overcome or remain a cause for concern: this should be included in the PTO's Annual Report. (para 97)
The PTO should firmly sustain the current practice of only accepting new Trusts if these are unavoidable. (para 101)
LCD HQ and the PTO should enter into discussions with the High Court to minimise its appointment of the Public Trustee in estates or settlements. (para 101)
Rather than have Trust work carried out directly by PTO staff, it should be allocated to local solicitors from an accredited or approved register, under appropriate contract arrangements Fees should be based on the same principles as those proposed for Receivership work. (para 102)
Trust fees should be charged on a transparent and auditable basis on individual cases, removing cross-subsidy and high withdrawal charges. They would be classed as an essential public cost for those Trusts or Estates that have no-one but the Public Trustee to administer them but are too small to pay any or all of the required fee. (para 103)
LCD should arrange for the necessary amendments to Court Funds Rules and Regulations to allow payments in satisfaction into Court to be stopped as quickly as possible, and replaced with equivalently secure financial undertaking arrangements. (para 107)
The PTO should formally agree with the Court of Protection that it continues its recent trend of allowing relatively small awards (eg below £10,000) to minors who are patients of the Court either to be paid to the family or executors concerned or to be made the subject of a private trust, with the offer of financial advice if necessary. (para 110)
Assuming responsibility for the Court Funds Office transfers to the Court Service consideration should then be given to removing or minimising some of the other sources of funds into that office. (para 112)
The PTO should test the market and see if a private agency eg a debt collecting or credit rating company would take a contract on a pilot basis to try and trace any of the parties who might claim any sums in the uncleared balances in Court Funds. They would receive an appropriate percentage of the sum claimed as a fee. (para 114)
PTO and LCD HQ should test the market and select on a contract basis an appropriately skilled and experienced strategic investment support partner. (para 122)
All funds under PTO should then be rolled up and regarded as analogous to a pension fund. Responsibility for the aggregated fund would lie with an augmented Board, (including non-executive Directors, professional investment supported a small number of qualified Trustees). Direct responsibility for all investment management should be exercised in the private financial sector, by specialist fund managers on behalf of the Board. (paras 122 and 124) .
Clear contractual and monitoring arrangements, together with benchmarking criteria should be devised, utilising specialist PTO business knowledge, best practice in the private sector and comparable public sector experience. (para 124)
The Lord Chancellor. s Honorary Investment Advisory Committee (whose current role is not appropriate to support such a fund) should be abolished. (para 123)
The PTO and the Court of Protection should agree criteria and procedures to give alternative investment authority to receivers who can demonstrate their preferred private arrangements are appropriately robust and properly devised. (para 126)
PTO caseworkers should refer back to the Court any instance where their annual review of accounts identifies a markedly poor performance by a receiver. s private investment plans. (para 127)
The Director for Change should ensure that the experience and standards of ZF Funds are appropriately integrated into the PTO. s financial planning, client service and monitoring work. (para 130)
The PTO should set up the sort of regular liaison forum that its main stakeholders would like, to help them contribute to improved performance and client service. (para 132)
The PTO should establish a programme of client surveys, devised and analysed to professional standards, to help inform its business and service development. (para 133)
LCD should assist the Director for Change to undertake a thorough review of the PTO. s complaints-handling procedures, including giving serious consideration to appointing an Independent Complaints Examiner. (para 136)
The Director for Change should address communications shortcomings, including the production of literature in more languages and ensuring that receivers who may be blind, deaf or dumb can liaise appropriately with the PTO. (para 138)
The Director for Change should urgently undertake a thorough review of the internal action that must be taken to ensure that notification of a death to the PTO is handled appropriately, to ensure that no inappropriate communications are subsequently sent out. (para 140)
As a matter of urgency, an appropriately qualified and experienced Resources Director should be appointed to co-ordinate and champion the efforts of the Finance, Business Planning, Human Resource and IT teams to improve operational performance. (para 145)
The Director of Change should review the PTO. s basic support areas that need urgent remedial attention ie office accommodation, training, recruitment and typing services. (para 145)
An IT strategy should be developed that concentrates on allowing PTO staff to regulate, monitor and analyse operations conducted on their behalf, whenever possible via the systems their delivery organisations will be utilising. Any IT needs that are not either already funded or are not going to be met by partnership arrangements should be tackled on the assumption they will be met through PFI-type sources. (paras 148 and 149)
The Director for Change should explore the scope for liaison with the Court Service and its IT service partner, bearing in mind that the Court Funds Office might be coming under its jurisdiction. (para 150)
