I have been a solicitor specialising in Inheritance tax and Probate work for over 40 years, however, in the last two years, we have seen a deterioration in the service offered by both HMRC Inheritance Tax and the Probate Registry. While a part of this is a result of the COVID pandemic the major cause of these problems is a combination of underinvestment or bad investment by HMRC and the Justice Department.
As far as HMRC are concerned matters which used to be dealt with in 2-3 days now take 4-6 weeks, other matters that used to take a month to six weeks now seem to disappear into a hole from which they rarely reappear until a complaint is made.
Probate Registration
With the Probate Registry things are far worse. Up until March 2020, a probate application usually took under 2 weeks to be processed. However, in March of last year, a new computer system went live, at the same time there was a reorganisation of offices which reduced the number of staff so a lot of experienced people who understood the process were gone, just as a global pandemic hit.
Online Probate Application Process
The timing of entering a new world of online probate applications could have been better, but at the very least we would be able to monitor applications online and all would be a bed of roses, except it was expected that one consequence of the new system was that the time to process applications was likely to increase to 3-4 weeks?
Since last March all that has happened is chaos, at one stage Grants of Probate regularly took between 8 and 16 weeks, although by Christmas this seemed to be improving with the delay reduced to around 6-8 weeks.
This deterioration in service is totally unacceptable. It causes distress to clients at a difficult time, it can frequently cause financial loss and I understand that consideration has been given by some people to take legal action for recovery against the MOJ. It can also reflect badly on legal firms, with firms having to prep the clients as to how long the process might realistically take.
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