Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 16 January 2023 to Question 117447 on Probate, how many unassessed probate cases for which evidence has been received were awaiting a decision for longer than six weeks since evidence was received in each of the last six months.

The number of probate cases that have been awaiting a decision for seven weeks or more is 9125 (December 2022).

The number of unassessed probate cases for which evidence has been received that were awaiting a decision for longer than six weeks is in the table below:

1 The administration of probate applications is dealt with as a national service, covering England and Wales. The open caseload excludes cases older than 6 months.

2 The time outstanding is counted from the application submission date recorded in the case management system, except for digital applications with a Will, where the date of receipt of the original Will by HMCTS is used.

Since October 22 we have increased staffing resources in Probate by 42%, an increase of 75 staff after taking account of attrition, recruiting into Probate an additional 100 staff. Following a period of extensive training those additional staff are now being used bring down the overall timeliness on digital and paper applications and improve call handling times.