Found: Providing additional training and resources to Probate Service staff so that they can anticipate

Found: processing of applications and an apparent loss of expertise necessitating the need for further Probate Service staff

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many full time equivalent staff worked in the probate service in each of the last five years.

Answered by Mike Freer

The probate service received record levels of applications during 2022 and this has continued to grow with higher levels of receipts during January to June 2023 compared to the same period in 2022. Whilst HMCTS has increased resources to meet the higher demand the training and upskilling of those new and existing staff has led to applications taking longer in the short term.

HMCTS are focused on increasing outputs to reduce overall timeliness on all types of applications and the average mean length of time taken for a grant of probate, following receipt of the documents required, is 13 weeks during April to June 2023.

Average waiting times for probate grants are routinely published on gov.uk via Family Court Statistics Quarterly and currently cover the period up to June 2023.

The number of FTEs working in the probate service in each of the last five years is as follows:

March 2019 = 152

March 2020 = 153

March 2021 = 250

March 2022 = 246

March 2023 = 296

We aim to answer telephone enquiries to the probate service within an average of 12 minutes. However, 2022 performance had fallen short of this goal but has since improved in 2023 by 60% to 12 minutes 15 seconds.

To improve telephone response times and the overall experience for applicants, HMCTS have undertaken additional staff training to ensure probate call agents can provide more accurate and helpful information.

To further enhance the information provided during calls, we are expanding our probate contact centre scripts and FAQs to address common queries in a clear and compassionate way.