To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the causes of delays within the Probate Service; and what steps he is taking tackle those delays.

Despite the unprecedented challenges faced by the probate service during the Covid 19 pandemic, and the increased volume of applications that have been seen since, 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 the average responses being almost 1 week faster in quarter 2 of 2022 than the yearly average for 2020 and 2021.

HMCTS has increased resources to meet the higher demand following an increased number of estates requiring probate and is further increasing resourcing to further bring down overall timeliness on digital and paper applications.

Average waiting times for probate grants, from April 2022 to June 2022, are published on gov.uk via Family Court Statistics Quarterly (Table 25):

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/family-court-statistics-quarterly-april-to-june-2022

Information covering up to September 2022 will be published on 15 December.