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Court of Protection Statistics

The MOJ has published the latest Family court statistics, which include those of the Court of Protection for the period April to June 2018. They demonstrate the continued growth of this area of the law, orders made by the Court of Protection made over the last year numbering just short of 40,000 compared to around 16,000 a decade ago.

Property and affairs continues to remain the mainstay of the COP work, and we note that the number of orders appointing property and affairs deputies – 3,069 – continuing to dwarf the 420 orders for appointment of a personal welfare deputy (we still await progress in the test case brought to determine whether personal welfare deputies should be appointed more frequently than at present). Interestingly no orders at all have been made for the appointment of a hybrid deputy in 2018 to date.

When it comes to the registration of LPAs, the statistics suggest that it will not be long before the OPG is receiving 200,000 LPAs for registration per quarter (the most recent quarter showing registration of 197,836).

The Court of Protection continues to make orders authorising deprivations of liberty in the community (so-called Re X orders). The dent in the number of unauthorised deprivations of liberty remains small, though, as only 728 applications for such orders were made in the second quarter of 2018 (down from 769 in the first quarter).