Hundreds of thousands of people are due a refund from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) after being overcharged when seeking a lasting power of attorney.

The MoJ has said the situation arose because the Office of the Public Guardian isn’t allowed to make a profit from carrying out this work - but failed to drop its prices after finding cheaper ways to grant powers of attorney.

Rachael Griffin, tax and financial planning expert at Old Mutual Wealth, said: “The Ministry of Justice is only supposed to charge enough to cover the cost of providing the service, but the large number of applications meant it made a £89 million surplus, which it now needs to repay.”

Old Mutual sent in a Freedom of Information request to find out how many people could be due a refund, and discovered 1.8million customers had been overcharged by up to £54.

Who is eligible

Refunds are being offered to people who applied to register lasting or enduring powers of attorney between April 1 2013 and March 31 2017.

You only need to make one claim for each donor, even if you made more than one power of attorney.

You can claim for a refund if you are:

the ‘donor’ - the person who made the power of attorney

an ‘attorney’ - appointed by the donor in an LPA or EPA

The refund must be paid to the donor.

Depending on when you applied, you will get between £34 and £54 - with 0.5% interest added.

However, if you paid a reduced fee, you’ll only get half the refund.

How to claim

You only need to fill in one form to make a claim, it takes about 10 minutes.

There’s full guidance online and a dedicated helpline. You can apply online here: https:// www.gov.uk/power-of-attorney-refund

If you’re using the helpline, call 0300 456 0300 and select option 6 to be put through to the refunds team.

Lines are open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 9am to 5pm and Wednesday from 10am to 5pm

Calls cost up to 10p a minute from a landline and between 3p and 40p a minute from a mobile.