Probate in England and Wales took a mean of 6.4 weeks in Q1 2026

In January to March 2026 the mean time from submission to grant across all applications was 6.4 weeks. Digital applications averaged 4.5 weeks (median 1.3 weeks), while paper applications averaged 16.5 weeks (median 11.9 weeks). Paper applications now take more than three and a half times as long as digital ones on the mean measure.

There were 81,069 applications for a grant of representation in the quarter and 76,430 grants issued. Over the twelve months to March 2026, 305,703 applications were made and 290,981 grants were issued. Digital applications made up 82.6% of all applications in the latest quarter.

Compared with the same quarter a year earlier, the overall mean wait rose by 0.2 weeks, the digital mean fell by 0.2 weeks, and the paper mean rose by 3.3 weeks. The service is holding steady for digital applicants while paper applications are drifting slower.

Every figure above covers all grants of representation together, and that population is dominated by grants of probate, which were 80.5% of applications in the quarter. Splitting the same measures by grant type shows the headline is not a safe guide to every route.

Where there is no will, the estate passes under the intestacy rules and the applicant asks for letters of administration rather than probate. Those took a mean of 10.5 weeks against 5.0 weeks for grants of probate, roughly twice as long. The main reason is channel mix: only 45.3% of letters of administration applications were made digitally, against 92.6% of probate applications, and paper is the slow route for every grant type.

Read the mean and the median together here, because they say different things. Letters of administration have a digital mean of 5.1 weeks but a digital median of only 0.6 weeks, so a clean digital application is usually issued very quickly and it is the stopped minority that lifts the average. On the all-channel measure the median is 11.0 weeks, which is what a paper heavy grant type looks like.

Letters of administration with will annexed, used where there is a valid will but no executor able or willing to act, are the slowest route of the three at a mean of 20.4 weeks. They are also the smallest, at 2,200 applications in the quarter.

The series opens in 2019 with mean waits of around eight weeks, at a time when almost all applications were on paper. Digital take-up climbed quickly: by mid 2020, roughly a third of applications were digital, and by 2023 more than three quarters were.

The clear low point for the service was 2023. In July to September 2023 the mean wait across all applications reached 15.0 weeks, the worst quarter in the published series, with paper applications averaging 21.8 weeks. Paper waits peaked slightly later, at a mean of 23.6 weeks in January to March 2024.

Recovery through 2024 was steady. By October to December 2024 the overall mean was back to 7.9 weeks, and 2025 saw the best quarter in the series: a mean of 6.0 weeks in April to June 2025. Since then the overall mean has held between 6.0 and 6.4 weeks, entirely because digital applications, which dominate the volume, are processed quickly. The paper channel tells a different story: paper means have worsened from 13.2 weeks in Q1 2025 to 16.5 weeks in Q1 2026.

The gap between the median and the mean is also worth reading. The digital median in Q1 2026 was just 1.3 weeks against a mean of 4.5, which tells you most digital grants come through fast, while a minority of complex or stopped cases pull the average up.

Scope. All grants of representation (grants of probate, letters of administration and letters of administration with will), all applicant types. Timeliness is measured from application submission to grant issue and includes stopped and not-stopped cases. The quarterly series and headline cover all grant types combined; a separate latest-quarter breakdown splits the same measures by grant type, because letters of administration are materially slower than grants of probate and the combined figure is dominated by probate.

Coverage. England and Wales, every quarter from Q2 2019 to Q1 2026. Volumes (applications, grants) are published from 2019-Q3 onward; timeliness from 2019-Q2. 2019-Q2 volume fields are null because they are not published in the source CSV, not because they are zero. Mean and median weeks are rounded to one decimal place from the published values. Nothing is estimated or interpolated. All timeliness figures are the submission-to-issue measure (SUB_TO_ISS_MEAN, SUB_TO_ISS_MEDIAN) of CSV Probate timeliness 2026 Q1, on the STOPPED = All cut except the two fields named _stopped and _not_stopped, which are the STOPPED and NOT STOPPED cuts of the same rows across all channels. All volumes are the APPLICANT TYPE = All cut of CSV Probate National 2026 Q1. The mean and the median differ sharply for some grant types because stopped applications sit in a long tail, so both are published rather than one.

Updated. Data to Q1 2026, generated 2026-07-24.

• Family Court Statistics Quarterly: January to March 2026 (probate CSVs: CSV Probate National, CSV Probate timeliness) (Ministry of Justice / HM Courts and Tribunals Service)

Download the full quarterly series (CSV)

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