Probate - how long?

SnowMan

And here are the average wait times over time for digital/paper, stopped/non stopped grants issued up to February 2024 in chart form

bob_a_builder

Just done a postal/paper Probate application - took 4 week from submission till the email saying it has been granted
Pretty simple straightforward 'excepted' case - But quite quick for a postal one compared to what I was reading on here
EDIT:
And the Grant of Probate has just come in the post - One day after the email notifying the grant of probate

SnowMan

The second session of the justice committee investigation into the probate service quality and delay issues took place two days ago. You can watch it here at 15:47:47

https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/9dc9dca2-a8d9-4876-8d49-9b2fcdde0f99

Two probate practitioners involved and certainly the discussion in my view got to the heart of many of the main issues, although it was missing the input of personal applicants to some degree.

One thing they brought up were that there were a few recent applications where grants were issued within 3-4 weeks (as some have been reported here) but they suggested they thought this was happening because applications weren't being dealt with in date order and there was some sort of cherry picking going on. 

GoogleMeNow

SnowMan said:

The second session of the justice committee investigation into the probate service quality and delay issues took place two days ago. You can watch it here at 15:47:47

https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/9dc9dca2-a8d9-4876-8d49-9b2fcdde0f99

Two probate practitioners involved and certainly the discussion in my view got to the heart of many of the main issues, although it was missing the input of personal applicants to some degree.

One thing they brought up were that there were a few recent applications where grants were issued within 3-4 weeks (as some have been reported here) but they suggested they thought this was happening because applications weren't being dealt with in date order and there was some sort of cherry picking going on. 

I wonder if the cherry picking as you suggest, is because the probate office has hired inexperienced people and they are being handed 'easy' applications to assist in their training, before they are competent to deal with the more complex applications?

It's obviously annoying for all those applicants who are being delayed by those 'queue jumpers' (and I was one of them!), but unless the probate office employ experienced/qualified staff (with the appropriate salary), this is surely going to get worse until it is addressed.

SnowMan

GoogleMeNow said:

I wonder if the cherry picking as you suggest, is because the probate office has hired inexperienced people and they are being handed 'easy' applications to assist in their training, before they are competent to deal with the more complex applications?

It's obviously annoying for all those applicants who are being delayed by those 'queue jumpers' (and I was one of them!), but unless the probate office employ experienced/qualified staff (with the appropriate salary), this is surely going to get worse until it is addressed.

From the hearing, of the 100 people HMCTS recruited 60 were extra numbers but the others 40 were to replace staff who had left (apparently that bit was kept quiet). The new recruits were trained internally by other probate staff so in the short term taking away application processing resource it appears. The new recruits aren't actually working on applications but were put on the helpline. Perhaps some of the staff who were answering the helpline are now available to process applications because the new recruits having been trained are now doing the phone bit. But it should make the phone helpline even less helpful if that is possible.

There was also a suggestion that the web chat was being answered by AI as the answers given were generally stock answers that weren't really very helpful.

One other thing they mentioned was that some of the incentives to stop cases had been removed. So when a case is stopped it goes back to the same team to progress further down the line, rather than being dealt with by another team. When my application was wrongly stopped a while back, it seemed to be because someone wanted to get it off their desk. Perhaps that wouldn't have happened if all the incentives to stop cases hadn't been there. There is no evidence up to February data that there has been a reduction in implied stop percentages though; but that said you'd expect a lag in this showing up in statistics in any case.

They also mentioned the inequity of applicants jumping the queue by contacting MPs (I was one of those queue jumpers )

Jowwie

I thought there were a lot of good points covered there. Fingers crossed some improvements get made on the back of it.

I would like to see a similar investigation into the practices of the DWP in recovery from estates. It took me approaching 6 months to get probate, but am at approaching a year after that now to get any figures out of the DWP.

OldMusicGuy

How about this - probate granted in 10 days (actual days, not working days). This was for an excepted estate with a well-written will with no ambiguity. Deceased had been in a care home and property had been sold so all their assets were in bank accounts and NS&I. No solicitors involved. 

Application submitted online and thanks to a lot of information I have gleaned from this site over the years we were in good shape, both in getting the deceased's affairs in order before they died and then processing the probate application ourselves. 

noitsnotme

I submitted an application online on January 19th.  Will posted and received on February 7th.  Thought it would be a simple one but they asked for further information on March 3rd.

They said the will suggested another will or codicil deals with foreign assets.  The only part we think may have lead to this was the sentence "This will relates only to my property in United Kingdom and does not affect any other property".

Very frustrating as this was standard wording provided when the will was set up through Farewill.  Its a very simple estate with no property and only cash in bank and premium bonds.

I had to reply stating that there are no foreign assets.

Still waiting unfortunately.  I did phone to check they had received my reply which they confirmed and said it's waiting to be looked at again.  So it looks like it goes to the back of queue.

OldMusicGuy

noitsnotme said:

They said the will suggested another will or codicil deals with foreign assets.  The only part we think may have lead to this was the sentence "This will relates only to my property in United Kingdom and does not affect any other property".

That could well be it. We had no such wording in our will. 

lispy

My late mother's probate was granted on the 12th April - this was 16 days from when submitted by the Solicitor. They told us up to 16 weeks!

However we knew it might be quicker as my father's was 9.2 weeks that came back end of January.
My parents passed away very close together and so we're wondering if mum's probate has come back so quick as basically all the same banking, investments and property info as they had just seen in January on my dad's? Who knows. But we're relieved.