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<p><ins class="ministerial">There were 53,253 probate cases in the Open Caseload<sup>1</sup>
as at 31 December. Of those 30,656 were more than 6 weeks old<sup>1</sup>. Of the
cases over six weeks old 13,536 were stopped, 7,247 were awaiting documentation and
9,873 were ready to progress.</ins></p><p><ins class="ministerial"><sup>1 </sup>Data
as at 31 December in line the official published stats. The administration of probate
applications is dealt with as a national service, covering England and Wales. The
open caseload excludes cases older than 6 months.</ins></p><p><ins class="ministerial"><sup>2</sup>The
time outstanding is counted from the application submission date recorded in the case
management system, except for digital applications with a Will, where the date of
receipt of the original Will by HMCTS is used.</ins></p><p><ins class="ministerial">This
data is management Information. The management information presented in this table
reflects what is recorded on relevant case-management systems on the date of extraction.
The case management systems are continually updated and so the information presented
will differ from previously published information. Management information can differ
from the quality assured MOJ official statistics, which form the agreed definitive
position. Although care is taken when processing and analysing the data, the details
are subject to inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale case management system and
is the best data that is available.</ins></p><p><del class="ministerial">The total
amount of unassessed probate cases where evidence has been received to enable a case
to be assessed is 12,923.</del></p><p><del class="ministerial">4805 of these cases
are over 6 weeks since the date the evidence was received.</del></p><p><del class="ministerial">In
addition, there are 38,245 cases which are either waiting for evidence, such as the
original will, to arrive, are subject to a legal hold following an application from
another party or have been stopped due to an error or missing documentation and are
waiting for a response from the applicant.</del></p><p>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.</p><p>The improvement of the online probate system remains
a priority for HMCTS, to ensure more applications can be issued first time and resources
can be focused on reducing waiting times.</p>
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