The Government has said that it costs HM Courts & Tribunals Service more to process probate applications than it receives in fees, resulting in taxpayers subsidising the processing of probate applications.

The increased fee is expected to raise between £23m and £25m each year from 2022.

Plans to increase probate fees up to potentially £6,000 and base them on the value of an estate look to have been dropped.

Estates worth less than £5,000 will continue to attract no fee. 

The proposed rise comes despite reported continued and often significant delays caused by mistakes made by the Probate Registry.

HM Courts & Tribunals Service recently introduced a new online portal for probate applications, with this portal now compulsory for almost all probate applications lodged by probate professionals. However, HM Courts & Tribunals Service still requires the original will and a copy of the signed legal statement to be sent to them by post.

There have been many complaints by probate professionals about the issues with the new portal. The portal requires a code from HM Courts & Tribunals Service, which can take up to 30 minutes to arrive, and according to professional services firm Kreston Reeves it is increasingly difficult to speak to staff at the Probate Registry.

The Government has closed many of the local Probate Registry offices and, according to Kreston Reeves, their staff are often not as knowledgeable about probate matters as they used to be.

There have been many reported instances of probate applications being mislaid or grants of probate containing mistakes in their wording, meaning that they have had to be returned which can result in significant delays. 

Simple probate applications are currently taking around eight weeks to process but if inheritance tax is due or on complex estates, Kreston Reeves has waited for up to six months for probate to come through. Before the online portal was introduced, probate was usually granted within two or three weeks of submitting an application.

Simon Levine, a solicitor and director of Legal Services at Kreston Reeves, said he does not expect there to be much opposition to the increase in fees.

He said: “The increase in fees is much less than the increase proposed in 2018 and then scrapped before the 2019 General Election. That increase would have resulted in fees of up to £6,000 for a grant of probate which caused significant opposition. It is unlikely that the proposed increase will cause as much opposition given that the maximum proposed increase is £118.”

The consultation closes on 23 September 2021 and it is proposed that the new fee structure will be introduced early in 2022.