Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department has taken to tackle delays in the probate system.

The most recently published information regarding combined waiting times for a grant of probate, on paper and digital cases, covers January 2021 to March 2021 and is published on gov.uk via Family Court Statistics Quarterly (Table 25):

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/family-court-statistics-quarterly-january-to-march-2021

Despite the unprecedented challenges faced by the probate service during the Covid 19 pandemic, and as a result of HMCTS increasing resources to meet demand, the average length of time taken for a grant of probate following receipt of the documents required has been maintained at between four to six weeks.

HMCTS continues to invest in the improvement of the online Probate system which was developed as part of the wider HMCTS Reform Programme to further streamline ways of working resulting in a system that is simpler and easy to understand for applicants; is accessible; and more efficient and robust to run.

The introduction of digital systems and bulk scanning has proved vital during the Covid 19 pandemic, allowing HMCTS staff to continue to process incoming applications and allowing Court users to access Probate services remotely.

The Exela contract is managed in line with MOJ Policy for strategic contracts and is therefore subject to the highest levels of governance to ensure service delivery. More than half a million documents were scanned without error in 2020 and on the rare occasions where errors occur, the majority of documents are re-scanned within 24 hours of a request being made.