The Public Guardian Allan Eccles has said that its online deputy reporting tool could be available to professionals as early as this summer.
The tool has been available for lay deputies for more than 18 months and has since been opened up to local authorities but up until now professionals have not been given access. Eccles said that a small group of solicitors have been participating in a pilot of the platform since April and that more than 10,000 lay deputies had used the service since its inception.
He outlined the key features as:
- The ability to record decisions made for clients as you go along and to create an annual report
- Reminders and deadlines accessible via an intuitive dashboard
- Auto-calculations and balances which will save time
- Upload documents such as bank statements without having to reply on post or email
Eccles said that users had reported significant time savings due to a reduction in correspondence between the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) and deputies and because of the ability to resolve queries more quickly. He said that the office has an aspiration to move towards an ‘almost entirely digital service, with paper being a rare exception’. He would not go as far as to commit to becoming completely paperless.
He also said that the recent formation of a dedicated professional deputies team at the OPG was proving successful, as the team were better equipped to answer – and ask – questions.
