Delays with Government Bodies: What to Expect 

July 2024

Many legal processes – whether that’s administering someone’s estate after their death, applying to act as someone’s power of attorney or taking legal action in a contentious case – can involve putting in applications to government bodies. The processing of these applications has always taken some time, but unfortunately it is currently requiring more patience than ever before.

If you are waiting on a response from a government body such as the Probate Registry, the Office of the Public Guardian, HMRC or the HM Land Registry, we’re afraid you are likely to be waiting for a good while. Many organisations developed an application backlog in 2020 and have not yet recovered.

We’ve put together a summary of expected wait times to help you know what to expect.

Probate Registry

Why you might be applying to them:

• To apply for grant of probate.
• To apply for letters of administration.

How long should you expect this to take?

Delays at the Probate Registry have become a significant issue in recent years. The average wait time doubled between 2022 and 2023, and even prompted a parliamentary inquiry in November 2023.

According to figures published in The Times in May 2024, online probate applications are now taking between two and five months on average, while paper applications can take up to a year. Last year, 6,942 applications took more than six months to be granted, which is a 112% increase on the number of applications that had to wait that long in 2020.

If you would like to know more about delays at the Probate Registry and what has caused them, you can read our previous blog post on the issue here.

Office of the Public Guardian (OPG)

Why you might be applying to them:

• To registering a Lasting Power of Attorney.
• To apply to become a deputy on someone’s behalf.
• To apply for a one-off decision from the OPG.

How long should you expect this to take?

The OPG are currently advising applicants to allow five months for an LPA to be registered. This is a huge increase on the pre-2020 timescale of two months, but the OPG have stated that waiting times are unlikely to return to these previous levels.

If you are applying for deputyship, delays at the OPG coupled with delays in the court system is likely to mean that this process could take six to twelve months. In situations where there is exceptional urgency, it may be possible for a deputyship order to be granted more quickly.

His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC)

Why you might be applying to them:

• Reporting the value of an estate for inheritance tax purposes.

How long should you expect this to take?

When you report the value of an estate to HMRC via the inheritance tax IHT400 form, you will need to wait for them to process this and provide you with a reference number. If there will be inheritance tax to pay on the estate, you will need this reference number before you can apply to the Probate Registry for a Grant of Probate. The usual turnaround time for this used to be ten working days, but it is now twenty.

In the case of some more complex estates, HMRC may wish to carry out additional checks, which are also likely to be subject to significant delays.

His Majesty’s Land Registry (HMLR)

Why you might be applying to them:

• Information service requests (such as conveyancing searches).
• Changing names on a property.
• Changing how a property is held (e.g. beneficial joint tenancies or as tenants in common).
• Registering a property transfer.
• Updating mortgage information on a property.
• Registering a property for the first time.
• Dividing an existing title.
• Creating a new lease.

How long should you expect this to take?

Waits at HMLR can vary greatly depending on the type of application you are making. Almost all information services requests are still being processed within a day or two. Most ownership transfer requests and changes to details on the registry are also being completed in less than a week, though 35% of these applications are taking more than a month to be processed. However, more complex requests such as registering a property for the first time, dividing a title or creating a new lease are taking much longer. In these situations, over 60% of applicants are waiting for more than a year.

In our experience, as of June 2024, all the HMLR applications we are making on behalf of clients are currently giving completion dates of 2025.

You can view HMLR’s breakdown of their processing times here.

Is there anything you can do about this?

The short answer here is: not really. Unfortunately, once you have submitted an application, there is unlikely to be anything you can do to speed things up. We know this can be incredibly frustrating, but all we can do is wait.

If a delay to your application may result in significant problems, it may be possible to make an emergency application. An experienced solicitor will be able to advise you on whether this might be possible in your circumstances and how to go about doing so.

There are ways to try and mitigate the impact of delays. If you haven’t yet put in an application but are thinking of doing so, we’d suggest acting as promptly as possible to avoid the situation becoming urgent. For example, if your elderly relatives have put a Lasting Power of Attorney in place but it has not yet been registered, it might be wise to do so ASAP, even if you don’t expect to need to act on the LPA for a long time to come. That way, even if the application takes the full five months to be granted, you will have it ready to use in plenty of time of needing to do so.

Finally, we’d recommend working with a specialist solicitor to ensure that the application you put in is completely correct the first time. This can significantly reduce the risk of your application being returned to you for corrections and accumulating additional waiting time.