There have a number of developments and initiatives with PoAs and this article offers a round-up of the current position.
Most significant is the continuing upward trend over the past 5 years the number of PoAs received. We record both number registered and number received categories, the number received figure is a more accurate reflection of PoA usage, given the difficulties we have currently with processing PoA demand.
The number received figures show that there has been a 21% increase in demand in recent years, and a 53% increase over the five years included in the table below. OPG is now processing more than 300 new PoAs each working day.
Increased volumes bring a rise in associated work such as requests for amendment, change of details or revocation. There are currently 80 such requests per day.
PoA Numbers
| Year | No. Registered | No. Received |
| 2012 / 2013 | 42528 | 47774 |
| 2013 / 2014 | 45576 | 52226 |
| 2014 / 2015 | 55527 | 60093 |
| 2015 / 2016 | 55007 | 67043 |
| 2016 / 2017 | 54919 | 72950 |
Processing developments
The OPG is presently recruiting an additional, sizeable, cohort of staff, on a fixed term basis, to address the issue of delays in processing PoAs which have been caused by this large increase in volumes. You will notice turnaround times progressively improving over the course of the latter half of this year – this will increase the volume of your return mail.
Rejection rates
One of the main causes of the processing delays is the substantially high level of rejected PoAs we have to deal with. Rejection rates are currently 22% for manual and 14% for electronically submitted deeds. This amounts to more than 12,000 deeds that require re-working – which in statistical terms is 75% of the backlog. See the common reasons for rejecting PoAs.
Please ensure you submit ‘clean’ deeds at first submission as this will help reduce the processing time enormously.
Public register
We receive a significant number of calls each day for public register information and these also impact on time we can give to processing new business. We are developing an online version of the public register, which we hope to have available later in the year.
Digital signatures
The (EPOAR) electronic PoA certificate is presently being revised to allow for a SMART card authenticated digital signature to be inserted. This will be available very shortly.
EPOAR
This digital option is only available for the electronic PoA function (EPOAR). If you do not use EPOAR and would like information or assistance with getting started, please contact us via the OPG email inbox
OPG@scotcourts.gov.uk.