Asked by: Tonia Antoniazzi (Labour - Gower)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average time taken is from submission of application to granting of probate in the last 12 months.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
HMCTS is 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, from submission, is 12.6 weeks in the last 12 months (October 2022 to September 2023) and following receipt of the documents required, is 10.8 weeks. The probate service received record levels of applications during 2022 and this has continued to grow, with higher levels of receipts during January to September 2023 compared to the same period in 2022.
HMCTS has increased staffing levels, streamlined internal processes and continued to invest in further improving the digital service.
As a result, the number of grants issued for recent months has been at record levels, with around 16,000 more grants issued than applications received during the last four months (September to December 2023), using more recent management information published by HMCTS (which does not go through the same level of quality assurance and analysis as the Family Court Statistics Quarterly).
Average waiting times for probate grants are routinely published on GOV.UK via Family Court Statistics Quarterly, and currently cover the period up to September 2023: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/family-court-statistics-quarterly.
Asked by: Tonia Antoniazzi (Labour - Gower)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to reduce waiting times for the granting of probate.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
HMCTS is 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, from submission, is 12.6 weeks in the last 12 months (October 2022 to September 2023) and following receipt of the documents required, is 10.8 weeks. The probate service received record levels of applications during 2022 and this has continued to grow, with higher levels of receipts during January to September 2023 compared to the same period in 2022.
HMCTS has increased staffing levels, streamlined internal processes and continued to invest in further improving the digital service.
As a result, the number of grants issued for recent months has been at record levels, with around 16,000 more grants issued than applications received during the last four months (September to December 2023), using more recent management information published by HMCTS (which does not go through the same level of quality assurance and analysis as the Family Court Statistics Quarterly).
Average waiting times for probate grants are routinely published on GOV.UK via Family Court Statistics Quarterly, and currently cover the period up to September 2023: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/family-court-statistics-quarterly.
Asked by: Tonia Antoniazzi (Labour - Gower)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the (a) average and (b) target response time is from submitting an online complaint to HM Courts and Tribunal Service.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
In the period July 2023 – December 2023 the average response time for complaints submitted online was 20.3 working days.
HM Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS) acknowledges the complaint on receipt and our aim is to respond within 10 working days.
All parts of the organisation have processes in place to flag and monitor the progress of complaint responses, but timeliness can sometimes be impacted by the level of enquiry or investigation required to enable substantive response, or by the need for administrative teams to focus temporarily on higher service delivery priorities e.g. order production.
Where staff capacity or capability is identified as a primary cause of delay, steps will always be taken to address, whether targeted training or recruitment to bring staffing up to funded headcount.
HMCTS has established a dedicated project to focus on the causes of dissatisfaction/complaints, to identify root cause and improve user experience and therefore reduce the number of, and time taken to respond to complaints.