Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, for what reason the target for the maximum time within which responses should be made to Probate applications was changed from eight to 16 weeks; and how many applications have been outstanding for more than 16 weeks.

The service standard for a grant of probate has not been increased to 16 weeks but our messaging to applicants has changed to reflect the longer waiting times that a minority of cases can wait for their grant.

For case received in December 2022, the average percentage of cases taking longer than 16 weeks to issue was 40%.

The average time taken from receipt of all documents required to the issue of the grant was 6.5 weeks in October to December 2022, compared to 7 weeks in the same period in 2021.