Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average waiting time on the Probate Service telephone inquiry line is.

HMCTS are committed to reducing call waiting times and are increasing resources to meet the increased demand. Extra resourcing is being directed to bring down the overall timeliness on digital and paper applications. The average length of time taken for a grant of probate following receipt of the documents required has been maintained at between five and seven weeks – with average responses being almost 1 week faster in quarter 2 of 2022 than the yearly average for 2020 and 2021.

The average wait time for people telephoning the National Courts and Tribunal Service Centre with queries relating to Probate between January 2022 and September 2022 was 28 minutes and 4 seconds.