Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of when the processing time of probate applications will be reduced to less than 16 weeks.

HMCTS are 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 13 weeks during July to September 2023.

During the same period the average mean length of time take for a grant of probate, following receipt of the documents required is (a) 10.1 weeks digital and (b) 21.8 weeks paper.

The probate service received record levels of applications during 2022 and this has continued to grow with higher levels of receipts during January to September 2023 compared to the same period in 2022.

HMCTS has increased staffing levels, streamlined internal processes and continued to invest in further improving the digital service.

As a result, the number of grants issued for recent months has been at record levels, with over 15,500 more grants issued than applications received during the last four months (September to December) using more recent management information published by HMCTS (which does not go through the same level of quality assurance and analysis as the Family Court Statistics Quarterly).

Average waiting times for probate grants are routinely published on gov.uk via Family Court Statistics Quarterly and currently cover the period up to September 2023.