Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make it his policy to waive probate fees in cases where applications are not processed within ten days through no fault of the applicant; and if he will make a statement.

There are no statutory requirements or public commitments from Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service in relation to the timeframe for issuing grants of probate. There is a cost to the provision of grants of probate and it is appropriate that this cost is mainly recovered through the application fee, rather than the burden falling to the tax payer.