Probate timescales and requests for further info

Rmd2021

Hi all, this application was made 23 weeks ago. 

At 16 weeks, the registry was called and they said it would take up to another 3 weeks.
At 19 weeks they were called and said it still hadn’t been looked at. Solicitor requested it be expedited and was told it would be.
A week later, the same response.
At 21 weeks they requested further information. Solicitor provided it straight away. 

Today they called and asked how long will it take now and was told ‘it is in the queue, we can’t say how long it will take’. 

Has anyone else been in this position? I.e. being asked for further information? I’m wondering if there are any recent examples that may help give me an idea of how long this is now likely to take.
I see other examples on this forum but from many Months or years ago.

Thanks!

polar_pig

I'm still waiting for mine, but less than 16 weeks so far.

The statistics show times for probate with and without requests for further info. They are struggling and each month waiting times increase:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/hmcts-management-information-september-2023

Rhubarbium

Interesting stats….. amazed by the size of the gap between submission and document upload. Mine was only about 10 days between submission and document upload being confirmed. Looking at the stats I reckon I’ll get probate some time between next week and 10 weeks after that 😂🤣

Rmd2021

polar_pig said:

I'm still waiting for mine, but less than 16 weeks so far.

The statistics show times for probate with and without requests for further info. They are struggling and each month waiting times increase:

This is really helpful, thank you. Yes they are struggling, but it’s encouraging that the latest figure shows a higher number of grants issued than applications received in a month for the first time in several years!

so from this info, my application should take 21.6 weeks, it took a week to submit the additional information so if the stats remain the same, it should be issued around about now. Gah.

SnowMan

Interesting statistics from that hmcts link. Just looking at the timescales from date of submission, these are the figures in that download if you tidy things up a bit. I've calculated implied stop rates also and tagged them on.

Rmd2021

SnowMan said:

Interesting statistics from that hmcts link. Just looking at the timescales from date of submission, these are the figures in that download if you tidy things up a bit. I've calculated implied stop rates also and tagged them on.

But what is the difference between ‘digital’ and ‘digital not stopped’?

SnowMan

Rmd2021 said:

SnowMan said:

Interesting statistics from that hmcts link. Just looking at the timescales from date of submission, these are the figures in that download if you tidy things up a bit. I've calculated implied stop rates also and tagged them on.

But what is the difference between ‘digital’ and ‘digital not stopped’?

'Digital stopped' is the average timescale from submission to grant for those applications that don't proceed smoothly and are stopped along the way. Cases may be stopped for example because HMRC haven't passed on the IH421, or the documents haven't been scanned in correctly, or there is missing information or some query about the will or the physical state of the will, or there is some dispute about who can apply for probate.

'Digital not stopped' is the overall average timescale from submission to grant for those cases that proceed smoothly and are not stopped

'Digital' is the overall average timescale from submission to grant allowing for cases that are both stopped and not stopped

SnowMan

I'm at the beginning of this process. Can't submit the probate application for 2 weeks because of the need to wait 4 weeks after sending in the inheritance tax forms. Even if things go smoothly we are talking about a 14.5 week wait for probate (4 weeks wait to submit plus about 10.5 weeks from submission to grant). As well as wanting to move on at a difficult time there are practical issues with an empty property that can't really be sold until after probate is obtained. The last time I made a probate application in 2000 it took 4 weeks in total. That's what they call progress.

This is my attempt at communicating the HMCTS probate timeliness data (I've added in the historic data as well) in a chart. I'm interested in any comments on this attempt.

 

Rmd2021

SnowMan said:

Rmd2021 said:

SnowMan said:

Interesting statistics from that hmcts link. Just looking at the timescales from date of submission, these are the figures in that download if you tidy things up a bit. I've calculated implied stop rates also and tagged them on.

But what is the difference between ‘digital’ and ‘digital not stopped’?

'Digital stopped' is the average timescale from submission to grant for those applications that don't proceed smoothly…

Thanks, that make sense, but the figures don’t! If it is a mean average of the two it would be around 16 wouldn’t it? I’m trying to consider worst case scenarios and had wondered if there was something I was missing. 

The whole thing is really stressful, I have never known an institution whose literal policy is to not tell customers anything!

Eddie2023

We're at nearly 11 wks and that is on top of the 20 working days with HMRC 

SnowMan

Rmd2021 said:

SnowMan said:

Rmd2021 said:

SnowMan said:

Interesting statistics from that hmcts link. Just looking at the timescales from date of submission, these are the figures in that download if you tidy things up a bit. I've calculated implied stop rates also and tagged them on.

But what is the difference between ‘digital’ and ‘digital not stopped’?

'Digital stopped' is the average timescale from submission to grant for those applications that don't proceed smoothly…

Thanks, that make sense, but the figures don’t! If it is a mean average of the two it would be around 16 wouldn’t it? I’m trying to consider worst case scenarios and had wondered if there was something I was missing. 

The whole thing is really stressful, I have never known an institution whose literal policy is to not tell customers anything!

I suspect it is the arithmetic average time (but I haven't spotted where they tell you that yet) which doesn't really tell you about the distribution of actual times around the average. If it's the arithmetic average (i.e the mean) the overall digital average will be weighted when comparing with the stopped/non-stopped averages by what proportion of digital applications are stopped or not stopped. So the overall digital average weights more towards the non stopped average as the majority of applications aren't stopped and so is below 16.

But the stopped and non stopped averages could be median averages, so that if there are 101 applications it's the time that the 51st longest application takes.  And if it's the median then the overall digital average will only really reflect applications that aren't stopped as the middle time falls within the non stopped applications.

I have no knowledge other than my own research re my own application.

I am guessing there is a long tail in the distribution of stopped applications. The very long times may relate to cases where there are serious issues with the will or disputes on who can apply. So if they've just brought up a small administrative query in your case, I'm guessing you shouldn't really be waiting much more than the stopped average time unless you were very unlucky.

The implied stop rates just assume it's an arithmetic average, just wanted to get a feel for how likely it might be that an application was stopped.