Her Majesty Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS) has announced positive news this week after announcing that services are improving.
The announcement on 24th February stated that ‘their probate service was in a good place performance wise’. Applications for probate which are filed either by post or online are now being returned to the sender within two weeks.
HMCTS have also launched their Welsh service which has included the roll out of bilingual new style Welsh grants.
A statement on the Law Society website reads:
“While this is a promising update, we relayed ongoing issues that our members are still encountering. “
The ongoing issues that the Law Society were seeking clarification on were:
- Having to wait significant time for grants and the impact these delays are having including delays in releasing money from estates to beneficiaries; and property transactions being impacted
- Receiving grants with errors which have to be returned
- Emails and phone calls to the service centres going unanswered
HMCTS have informed the Law Society that the above issues are ‘operational issues’ and will be raised with the National Services Director who will then address them.
It was announced at the end of 2019, that HMCTS were going to limit face to face communication for probate services, but it seems that it’s still struggling to meet user expectations. Especially when it was believed that this move would increase efficiency and the processing of probate applications.
