Asked by: Ashley Dalton (Labour - West Lancashire)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps her Department is taking to improve the enforcement of the Code of Practice for Victims of Crime in England and Wales.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
This Government is committed to making sure victims have the information and support that they need, and we are determined to improve compliance with the Victims’ Code.
We will implement the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024, which lays a good foundation for victims to know the rights they have under the Code, and hold agencies accountable for delivering them.
But we will go further by increasing the powers of the Victims’ Commissioner so there is more accountability when victims’ rights under the Code are not upheld.
Asked by: Ashley Dalton (Labour - West Lancashire)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average waiting time was to process a probate application in the latest period for which data is available; and what steps his Department is taking to reduce the average waiting time.
Answered by Mike Freer
The probate service received record levels of applications during 2022 and this has continued to grow with significantly higher levels of receipts during January to March 2023. Whilst HMCTS has increased resources to meet the higher demand the training and upskilling of those new and existing staff has led to applications taking longer in the short term.
HMCTS is focused on increasing outputs to reduce overall timeliness on all types of applications and the average mean length of time taken for a grant of probate, following receipt of the documents required, is 9 weeks during January to March 2023.
Average waiting times for probate grants, are routinely published on gov.uk via Family Court Statistics Quarterly and currently cover the period up to March 2023.