Ministry of Justice figures for April to June 2026 put the mean wait for a probate grant at five weeks and the median at one week, so most applications clear far faster than the average suggests. Letters of administration are slower: around 10 weeks without a will and around 22 weeks with one. No sale of an estate property can complete before the grant is issued, whoever the buyer is.
The Ministry of Justice publishes probate timings quarterly. The headline average is five weeks, the typical case is one week, and an estate without a will waits far longer than either. Which number applies to you depends on the grant you need.
What do the figures actually measure?
The Ministry of Justice publishes probate timings every quarter. For April to June 2026 the mean wait between an application being submitted and a probate grant being issued was five weeks. The median was one week.
That is a narrower measurement than most people assume. It does not include the time before the application: registering the death, locating the will, valuing the estate and, where tax is due, reporting and paying it. Those come first, and on most estates they take considerably longer than the registry does.
Which number should you actually plan around?
The median, in most cases. Half of probate grants were issued within about a week.
The gap between a one week median and a five week mean is the whole story: a minority of difficult applications pulls the average up well above the typical case. So five weeks is not a floor, which is how averages like this usually get read. It is comfortably above what most applications take.
Does it matter which grant you need?
More than anything else in the figures, and this is the part that rarely gets reported.
Those numbers are for probate grants, which is what you apply for when there is a will naming you as executor. Letters of administration are slower by a wide margin: around 10 weeks where there is no will, and around 22 weeks where there is a will but an administrator has to be appointed instead of an executor.
If the estate you are dealing with is intestate, the registry’s part of the process is realistically a couple of months rather than a couple of weeks. That single fact changes the plan for the property more than any other number here.
How long does probate take? carries the single sourced figure this site uses for the overall timeline, which is a different question from the registry’s turnaround.
Is the backlog getting better or worse?
Both, depending on which end you look at. Probate grants are being issued in a similar time to the equivalent quarter of 2025, so the speed has held. At the same time the open caseload has grown: 47,003 cases open at the end of June 2026 against 39,357 a year earlier, a rise of 19%. Of those open cases, 76% had been open for less than six months.
The registry is holding its turnaround while holding more cases at once, which is consistent with volume rising rather than performance slipping.
What does it change about selling a property?
Nothing about the earliest possible completion date, which is the point. Ownership has no legal route to transfer until the grant is issued, and that applies to an estate agent sale, an auction and a cash buyer equally. Anyone promising completion before the grant is either mistaken or not being straight with you.
What it does change is where the time is worth spending. Clearing the property, insuring it properly, getting more than one valuation and agreeing terms with a buyer can all happen while the application sits with the registry. Selling before probate is granted sets out what can and cannot be done in that window.
When will these figures change?
At the next quarterly release. They are on this site’s quarterly review cycle for that reason, and the current figures and their source are listed in our sources and review log.
What do people ask about this?
How long does probate take in the UK?
Probate usually takes 6 to 12 months for a typical estate, and longer where there is a property to sell. Getting the grant itself is only part of it: the estate still has to be valued, tax settled and assets distributed afterwards. A property that needs repair, has a title defect or sits in a chain will extend that timeline further.
What delays probate?
The usual causes are an estate that is complex to value, inheritance tax that has to be calculated and paid before the grant is issued, missing or unclear documentation, and disputes between beneficiaries. A property with a title defect, an unknown boundary or a missing deed can add its own delay on top.
Where does this come from?
- MoJ: Family Court Statistics Quarterly, April to June 2026
- MoJ: Family Court Statistics Quarterly, the collection
Figures on this site that can change are listed with their sources in our sources and review log.
What else has changed?
There are no updates yet.