OPG introduces Professional Guardian Scheme

The Office of the Public Guardian is introducing a “Professional Guardian Scheme”. The purpose of the scheme is to introduce tailored supervision for guardianship accounts and combat the current backlog on account approval. On 12 December 2016, the delay was 22 weeks.

Membership of the scheme is by firm. In order to become a member, the firm requires a minimum of five guardianship cases running. This is to show that they have a certain level of expertise. Members who complete the compulsory training will be listed as an accredited member on the OPG website.

Under the scheme, the OPG will no longer undertake a full review of the accounts for every case. They will instead audit a few samples. Provided the audits are clear, they will accept all of the accounts with a covering page summary.