I was perhaps not as surprised as I would like to have been to see a letter from a reader of the Guardian today despairing that a leading bank had lost her father's original Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) document, in the process of trying to "activate" it with that bank so that his attorneys could use it to make decisions over his account held there.

While far from ideal, this sort of incident is not uncommon and could be found in many institutions receiving LPAs in order to activate them internally. However, in the modern age, the idea of sending an important document through the post, to be handled internally by any number of departments in the receiving institution before being sent back in the post to the attorneys, seems to me to be outdated, inefficient and, in a worst case scenario, seriously problematic for the customer.

I wrote recently that the proposed modernisation of the current paper-based LPA system is to be welcomed, provided that sufficient safeguards are built into the system to ensure the protection of vulnerable individuals. Stories like this show that, subject to those provisos, digitalisation cannot come soon enough.  

While waiting for these improvements though, perhaps a practical suggestion to the Guardian reader might have been to ask any institutions she needs to deal with in the future if they will accept a certified copy of the LPA, rather than the original. This will often be acceptable and allows the original to be stored safely, avoiding the inconvenience and stress that the reader clearly suffered.