Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the service provided by the (a) probate service and (b) probate service contractors.

Official statistics published by the Ministry of Justice show that despite continued high levels of receipts, the effectiveness of the service being provided continues to improve. Average waiting times are reducing and was 6 weeks, from receipt of the documentation needed across all types of grants, for grants issued during October to December 2024, down from 13 weeks for the same period in 2023 and the open caseload has reduced to 39,142 as at the end of December 2024, down from 77,904 at the end of 2023.

HMCTS administers the probate service with civil servants. When a third party provides a service, such as document scanning, HMCTS regularly meets with them to review performance against Service Level Agreements and has no concerns.

Average waiting times and open caseload for probate grants are routinely published on gov.uk via the Family Court Statistics: Family Court Statistics Quarterly - GOV.UK.