The Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) has announced the appointment of 22 new Court of Protection General Visitors and the re-appointment of a further six. 

Bill set to enter committee stage

Due to come into force 1st January 2023. The rules make changes to contempt proceedings and electronic service. The full explanatory note is set out below:

"EXPLANATORY NOTE
These Rules amend the Court of Protection Rules 2017 (S.I. 2017/1035) to substitute for Part 21 of those Rules a new Part 21, for the purpose of making provision for a consistent approach in relation to contempt proceedings having regard to the relevant provisions of the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 (S.I. 1998/3132 – see Part 81 as substituted by S.I. 2020/747) and the Family Procedure Rules 2010 (S.I. 2010/2955 – see Part 37 as substituted by S.I. 2020/758).

These Rules also make minor amendments in rules 6.3 and 9.1 of the Court of Protection Rules 2017, principally to clarify the rules for electronic service and to make reference to a new practice direction supplementing the Rules."

The LPS implementation team have sent out their latest email update on progress with the consultation. They say they have received over 650 responses and are currently collating and analysing  responses. Once this has been done a further update is expected later this year.  

The newsletter also highlights the 2021-22 data for the DoLS released by NHS Digital. There were an estimated 270,650 applications for DoLS received during 2021-22 an increase of 5.5% compared to the previous year. The full data set can be found on the NHS Digital site. 

Andrew Gordon-Saker, the Senior Costs Judge, has released a note on the pilot that starts 1 November 2022. ​