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Powers of attorney registered before 2009 are currently held in a secure, off-site storage facility.  Up until now our policy has been to recall these from storage when we are notified of a terminating event and return the power of attorney document to the original sender.   

However, from January 2020 we will no longer retain and return original powers of attorney to the sender. All documents held in storage will be destroyed securely.

You may ask why the change in policy?  

1. Retrieving documentation from storage and returning to the sender has proved to be a time consuming exercise and one which takes staff time away from our core business such as processing powers of attorney and the supervision of financial guardians.     
2. There is significant cost to the public purse in renting storage space.
3. Often when we return an original power of attorney the sender contacts us to ask why we have sent it and what they are to do with it.            
4. Over the past 6 months we have carried out a pilot exercise where we have not returned the original power of attorney when notified of a terminating event. During this exercise, no one contacted us to ask about or request the return of the original document. Taking points 3 and 4 into consideration it appears that there is no expectation from senders to have the power of attorney returned after it has terminated.    
5. All registered powers of attorney will continue to be held digitally and therefore we can provide copies if required. Per our Records Management Policy, we hold the scanned image on record for 12 months following termination of a power of attorney.

Much thought and consideration has been given to this policy decision and advice has been taken on the matter. The new policy will be implemented on 3^rd January 2020 thus any powers of attorney registered prior to 2009 and held in storage will be destroyed securely.

We recognise that Solicitors may wish to hold certain original powers of attorney. If this is the case you must write to us before 31 December 2019 indicating the specific documents you require.

For further information, please contact opg@scotcourts.gov.uk