Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how long it takes on average to process a probate application.
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
Average time to grant issue for grants of Probate, England and Wales, quarterly Q3 2019 – Q1 20211,2,3,6
Probate - All | |||||||
Application submission to grant issue | Document receipt to grant issue4 | ||||||
Year | Quarter | Grants issued | Mean weeks | Median weeks |
| Mean weeks | Median weeks |
2019 | Q3 | 53,403 | 9.5 | 8.0 | 9.5 | 8.0 | |
2019 | Q4 | 54,388 | 7.8 | 5.6 | 7.6 | 5.4 | |
2020 | Q1 | 49,706 | 6.7 | 4.3 | 6.5 | 4.1 | |
2020 | Q2 | 45,493 | 6.6 | 4.6 | 6.3 | 4.4 | |
2020 | Q3 | 60,221 | 6.7 | 4.9 | 6.0 | 4.4 | |
2020 | Q4 | 54,469 | 7.2 | 5.3 | 6.2 | 4.9 | |
2021 | Q1 | 57,620 | 7.7 | 4.4 |
| 5.3 | 0.9 |
Probate - Digital | |||||||
Application submission to grant issue | Document receipt to grant issue4 | ||||||
Year | Quarter | Grants issued | Mean weeks | Median weeks |
| Mean weeks | Median weeks |
2019 | Q3 | 7,166 | 9.4 | 7.6 |
| 9.0 | 7.1 |
2019 | Q4 | 11,060 | 10.2 | 9.0 |
| 9.2 | 8.3 |
2020 | Q1 | 10,784 | 7.1 | 4.9 |
| 6.0 | 3.7 |
2020 | Q2 | 10,955 | 6.1 | 3.7 |
| 4.7 | 2.1 |
2020 | Q3 | 21,592 | 6.4 | 4.4 |
| 4.3 | 2.6 |
2020 | Q4 | 21,879 | 6.6 | 3.1 |
| 4.2 | 0.3 |
2021 | Q1 | 35,996 | 6.6 | 4.1 |
| 2.9 | 0.0 |
Probate - Paper | |||||||
Application submission to grant issue | Document receipt to grant issue4 | ||||||
Year | Quarter | Grants issued | Mean weeks | Median weeks |
| Mean weeks | Median weeks |
2019 | Q3 | 46,237 | 9.6 | 8.1 |
| 9.6 | 8.1 |
2019 | Q4 | 43,328 | 7.2 | 4.7 |
| 7.2 | 4.7 |
2020 | Q1 | 38,922 | 6.6 | 4.1 |
| 6.6 | 4.1 |
2020 | Q2 | 34,538 | 6.8 | 4.7 |
| 6.8 | 4.7 |
2020 | Q3 | 38,629 | 6.9 | 5.1 |
| 6.9 | 5.1 |
2020 | Q4 | 32,590 | 7.6 | 6.3 |
| 7.6 | 6.3 |
2021 | Q1 | 21,624 | 9.4 | 7.7 |
| 9.4 | 7.7 |
Source: HMCTS Core Case Data
Notes:
1) HMCTS Core Case Data came into effect at the end of March 2019, following a transition between data systems recording information regarding The Probate Service
2) The average timeliness figures are produced by calculating the time from application/document receipt (which may be from an earlier period) to the grant issued made in that period. Currently grants being issued on the same day as the application submission/document receipt are being calculated as 0 days. This is being reviewed as to whether it is an accurate reflection of workload and may be adjusted in future
3) Some averages presented here may be based on a small number of grants. Where this occurs, any conclusion drawn from these will be limited
4) Document receipt occurs after payment has been made and all accompanying paperwork has been received by HMCTS. As such, it does not reflect the entire case journey from when an application is submitted by the user to when a grant is received. Instead these figures reflect the timeliness from when HMCTS staff are able to start working on the case. The aspects not included in these timeliness measures include (but are not limited to); time taken to scan and upload documents to the management system (for paper items), and check that these items are of good enough quality to proceed. For the timeliness figures for stopped cases, the figures will further exclude time taken to resolve those issues mentioned in footnote 6 below
6) A probate application can be stopped for several reasons: a caveat can be entered when there’s a dispute about either who can apply for probate or issues with a will or proposed will, or if an error is identified and a request for further information is made
Despite the unprecedented challenges faced by the probate service during the Covid 19 pandemic the average waiting for a grant of probate following receipt of the documents required has been maintained at between four to six weeks.
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) provides waiting time information up to June 2021 for grants of probate as well as letters of administration with/without a Will annexed and reseals. This shows that the waiting time on digital grant of probate applications, which are not stopped due to errors or missing documentation, is between two and three weeks for June 2021 where paper cases, not stopped, took around five weeks in June 2021.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/hmcts-management-information-june-2021