Civil service probate delays hold up millions in donations for charities

Civil service probate delays are stalling cancer research and holding up millions of pounds in donations to charities, MPs have been told.

About £34m in donations left in wills to Cancer Research UK is stuck in a chronic backlog of cases at HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS).

The charity claimed this means life-saving research missed out on vital funding in 44 projects it had planned to invest in this year.

It said in January that the UK faced a £1bn funding gap in research and development for cancer treatment over the next decade, as cases of the disease are predicted to increase in real terms in the future. Angela Morrison, Cancer Research’s chief operating officer, told MPs on the justice select committee on Tuesday that the charity was in the dark about when the money would arrive.

“We cannot commit to spending that money unless we know it’s going to come. We have research this year we’ve not invested [in]. There’s 44 [projects] we could have invested in this year that we’ve not invested in,” she said.

Probate is a legal document that recognises a will is legitimate and allows an estate to be passed down to its inheritors. Official guidelines suggest it should take up to 16 weeks to be granted probate, but current delays, first caused by the pandemic and the implementation of new online systems, mean some families and other beneficiaries like charities are waiting more than a year.

They have been blamed on property deals falling through and late payment fines levied by HM Revenue & Customs being added to inheritance tax bills. But millions of pounds left in wills, earmarked for charitable donations, is also being held up, the committee heard.

The Devon Air Ambulance Trust said its overall income had dropped by £2.9m in the past year, partly because of probate delays. The lack of funding is preventing it from building a new base to expand its coverage in south-west England and buying new helicopters to update its “ageing” fleet of air ambulances, the charity said in written evidence. The trust said one large donation, worth more than £2m, was currently on hold because of the HMCTS backlog.

Dave Hawes, Devon Air Ambulance’s finance director, said: “There’s one in probate at the moment which is potentially worth several million to us.” He added that the charity’s decision-making was being hampered by probate delays on as little as “one or two transactions”.

About £ 90m left to the RSPCA in 2,500 wills every year is also under threat as waits spiral from three weeks to six months in some instances, the charity said in its evidence to MPs.

It said: “The RSPCA does not believe the probate service has the necessary resources or expertise to consider and process probate applications.”

The HMCTS said: “We know how important donations left in wills are for charities and we are taking unprecedented steps to speed up the process. These are working and resulted in record numbers of grants being issued in the final three months of 2023.”