Probate delays blamed for £300m fall in charity aid from wills

The value of charitable donations left in wills could plunge by £300m this year, leaving organisations scrambling for vital funding.

The number of people who bequeathed money to good causes dropped by a fifth between January and September, charities said. Donated legacies will fall to £ 3.1bn this year compared with £3.4bn in 2019. The third sector has already faced shortfalls worth billions as donations dried up during the pandemic.

Charities said anticipated falls in house prices next year could further reduce how much is donated. The average bequest value could fall 10pc by 2022 compared with last year’s levels, forecasts suggested.

Crippling delays at the probate registry, the courts that deal with someone’s affairs after they die, have been blamed for the shortfall.

Lengthy hold-ups from 2019 have worsened during the crisis following a higher than expected death rate and staff working from home. It has caused a bottleneck and slowed the release of funds. Remember a Charity, Legacy Foresight and the Institute of Legacy Management, which compiled the figures, have held talks with the Government about the “troubling delays’’.

Without timely indications that money is heading their way, more services are threatened with being cut and staff are at risk of losing their jobs, the charities said. The findings were based on data from Smee & Ford, a contractor that reads wills to look for donations.

A Government spokesman said it had overcome the backlog and funding would recover. He added: “Wait times have fallen to under seven weeks, so charities will quickly receive all legacy funding left to them.”

Craig Fordham, of cancer charity Macmillan, said it was facing the hardest year in its 109-year existence. Telegraph readers have raised more than £124,000 for Macmillan as well as Refuge, Carers UK and Cruse Bereavement Care as part of our annual appeal.

Mr Fordham said: “A third of our income comes from legacies and, at a time when so many other fundraising activities have had to be cancelled because of the pandemic, this has been a lifeline.”