Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 16 January 2023 to Question 117447 on Probate, how many probate cases have been awaiting a decision for seven weeks or more.

The number of probate cases that have been awaiting a decision for seven weeks or more is 9125 (December 2022).

The number of unassessed probate cases for which evidence has been received that were awaiting a decision for longer than six weeks is in the table below:

1 The administration of probate applications is dealt with as a national service, covering England and Wales. The open caseload excludes cases older than 6 months.

2 The time outstanding is counted from the application submission date recorded in the case management system, except for digital applications with a Will, where the date of receipt of the original Will by HMCTS is used.

Since October 22 we have increased staffing resources in Probate by 42%, an increase of 75 staff after taking account of attrition, recruiting into Probate an additional 100 staff. Following a period of extensive training those additional staff are now being used bring down the overall timeliness on digital and paper applications and improve call handling times.