Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether his Department is taking steps to help reduce the time it takes for the Probate Office to respond to applications.

Despite the unprecedented challenges faced by the probate service during the Covid 19 pandemic, and the increased volume of applications that there have been seen since, the average length of time taken for a grant of probate following receipt of the documents required has been maintained at between five and seven weeks – with the average responses being almost 2 weeks faster in quarter 3 of 2022 than the yearly average for 2020 and 2021.

Average waiting times for probate grants, up to September 2022, are published on gov.uk via Family Court Statistics Quarterly (Table 25): https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/family-court-statistics-quarterly-july-to-september-2022

HMCTS has increased resources to meet the higher demand following an increased number of estates requiring probate and is further increasing resourcing to further bring down overall timeliness on digital and paper applications.

The improvement of the online probate system remains a priority for HMCTS, to ensure more applications can be issued first time and resources can be focused on reducing waiting times.