Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if his Department will make an assessment of the adequacy of rates of processing probate applications by HM Courts and Tribunals Service.

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