Probate
(asked on 25th February 2020) - View Source
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, when his Department last made an assessment of the efficiency of the dispatch of probate; and if he will make a statement.
Her Majesty Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) constantly monitor and review performance on the processing of probate applications. From April 2019 to September 2019, there was a temporary increase in waiting times which was caused by a combination of an increased volume of incoming work and the transition to a new case management system. The move to the new system meant that staff had to spend time being trained and familiarising themselves with it. There were also some initial performance issues which have now been resolved.
Official statistics are not published on the average length of time from receipt of the application to the issue of a grant of probate. Her Majesty’s Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) internal management information, which is not subject to the rigorous quality assurance processes of official statistics, has been used to show average times from receipt of an application to a grant being issued in January 2020.
Measure | Average Weeks to issued | Median to issue |
Submission to issue for all grants issued in the month (including those stopped for queries or missing documentation) | 7 | 5 |
From submission to issue for grants issued in the month that were not stopped. | 5 | 4 |
These figures include applications made via the online service and uses the receipt date of the digital application for recording the time of issue, rather than the time the necessary supporting documentation is sent to HMCTS in order to start processing the application. The data has been extracted from the HMCTS Reform Core Case Data system, which is a new system in active development, and may not be directly comparable with figures for earlier periods.