Appointeeship and Deputyship FAQs

If a person is living in supported housing, a care or nursing home and is receiving welfare benefits and a social care package and the are incapable of managing their own finances, they may need a corporate appointee to help to manage their welfare benefit payments and legal responsibilities.

A Corporate Appointee is an organisation, such as The Money Carer Foundation, that is authorised by the Department of Work and Pensions to manage a vulnerable person’s benefits and to act in their best interest and free from any conflict of interest.

A Corporate Appointee is usually appropriate when no identifiable, or suitable, relatives or close friends can be approached.

Yes, but possibly with some difficulty.

The reality is that it can be quite difficult for a DWP appointee to open a bank account with a high-street bank.

This is because an appointee does not have the same level of authority that a court of protection deputy or lasting power of attorney has. Although some banks do offer a very basic bank account for DWP appointees the process of opening an account can be long-winded and quite involved.

Some bank accounts that are available to appointees also have restrictions such as balance limitations as low as £3000 in some cases. This means that for many appointees, these restrictions don’t make the bank account practical or fit for purpose.

If you are an appointee or deputy for a loved one, you can open an FSCS-protected bank account easily on our banking platform in the same way that many solicitors and local authorities do. Just contact us and our banking services team will be happy to help. Open an appointee bank account here.

For further information about becoming a DWP appointee, please download our appointee guide for family members.

If the current appointee no longer wishes to act and nominates another person or organisation, or if the individual is unhappy with their appointee, and has the capacity to choose an alternative appointee, they can request this.

The existing appointee would, however, need to agree to relinquish their appointeeship with the DWP, and the new appointee would need to apply by completing a BF56 document and sending it to the DWP.

Before any change of appointeeship, the DWP will need to be assured that the request to change the legal appointee is actually in the best interest of the benefit claimant.

Oftentimes, appointeeship change requests can be simple expressions of unhappiness relating to access to additional money requests by the individual. The appointee, however, may have valid reasons, or wider safeguarding concerns, that form the basis of their decisions around access to funds that could otherwise put the individual at risk.

It is important to acknowledge, that whilst the Mental Capacity Act (2005) and its 5 underpinning principles, allow for the ability of individuals to make ‘unwise decisions’, the Act was not designed to avoid difficult decision-making by practitioners in order to safeguard vulnerable people.

For further information about becoming a DWP appointee, please download our appointee guide for family members.