Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the length of time it takes for HM Courts and Tribunals Service to complete a grant of probate application.

Despite the unprecedented challenges faced by the probate service during the Covid 19 pandemic, and the increased volume of applications that have been seen since, the average length of time taken for a grant of probate following receipt of all the documents required has been maintained at between five and seven weeks – with the average responses being almost 1 week faster in quarter 3 of 2022 than the yearly average for 2020 and 2021.

HMCTS has increased resources to meet the higher demand following an increased number of estates requiring probate and is further increasing resourcing to further bring down overall timeliness on digital and paper applications.

Average waiting times for probate grants, up to September 2022, are routinely published on gov.uk via Family Court Statistics Quarterly (Table 24): https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/family-court-statistics-quarterly-july-to-september-2022.

Information covering up to December 2022 will be published on 30 March.