Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of delays in granting probate on the wills of deceased persons in (1) England, and (2) Wales, due to the COVID-19 pandemic; and what steps they are taking to clear the backlog of cases caused by such delays.

The administration of probate applications is dealt with as a national service, covering England and Wales.

Average waiting times for probate grants, from July 2019 to September 2021, are published on gov.uk via Family Court Statistics Quarterly (Table 25):

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/family-court-statistics-quarterly

Information for the period up to December 2021 will be published on 31 March.

More recent management information published by HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS), which does not go through the same level of quality assurance and analysis as the Family Court Statistics Quarterly, provides waiting time information up to December 2021: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/hmcts-management-information-december-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 is between five and seven weeks.

The improvement of the online probate system remains a priority for HMCTS, to ensure more applications can be issued first time and resources can be focused on reducing waiting times. HMCTS continues to collaborate with its users to enhance the service and the latest information on this can be found at: https://insidehmcts.blog.gov.uk/2022/02/28/working-together-to-avoid-delays-to-probate-applications/ .