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Probate delays are one of the most frustrating aspects of estate administration, and where both HMRC and the probate service are involved there are two queues rather than one. This guide explains what the published processing times actually are, the main causes of delay, the IHT interest implications, and what you can do while you wait. The court timescales here are for England and Wales: Scotland applies for confirmation at the sheriff court and Northern Ireland to the Probate Office of the High Court in Belfast, each on its own timetable. For a full overview of how probate works, see our complete UK probate guide.
Where a full IHT400 is needed, probate involves two separate processes with two separate timescales:
Nobody publishes a combined figure for the two stages together, so this guide does not offer one.
For guidance on the application forms, see our guide to the PA1P and PA1A probate application forms.
Understanding the cause of your delay helps you address it. The main causes are:
The most common cause of delay is a probate application that is returned because it is incomplete or contains errors. Common problems include:
If your application is returned, the Probate Registry will send a rejection letter specifying the problem. Correct the issue promptly — the application queue restarts once resubmitted.
If HMRC opens a compliance check on the IHT400, it will not release the unique code until the check is resolved, so the probate application cannot proceed. HMRC does not publish how long compliance checks take.
If HMRC has had your IHT400 for more than 20 working days and no code has arrived, GOV.UK's instruction is to contact HMRC. See our guides on HMRC IHT compliance check letters and how to respond to an HMRC probate query.
The probate service has had significant backlogs. The Ministry of Justice reported that average waits fell from twelve weeks at the end of 2023 to just over four weeks by December 2024, and the open probate caseload fell from over 69,000 at the end of March 2024 to around 35,500 a year later. The mean has since settled at around 5 weeks. Waiting times can move, so check the latest Family Court Statistics Quarterly rather than relying on a figure typed on a web page.
Where IHT is due, it must generally be paid before the grant is issued. This creates a timing problem: you need the grant to get at the estate's assets to pay the tax — but you cannot get the grant until the tax is paid. The Direct Payment Scheme resolves this for many estates. (Being above the £325,000 nil-rate band does not by itself mean tax is due: the residence nil-rate band, the transferable nil-rate band and the spouse and charity exemptions can all remove the liability.)
The Direct Payment Scheme (DPS) allows IHT to be paid from the deceased's bank or building society accounts before probate is granted. This solves the chicken-and-egg problem. Here is how it works:
Not all banks participate in the DPS, and banks can only pay up to the balance in the deceased's accounts — if those are insufficient to cover the IHT, the shortfall has to come from somewhere else: borrowing, an executor's own funds, or the instalment option where the assets qualify. For full details, see our guide on paying IHT before probate using the Direct Payment Scheme.
HMRC charges interest on unpaid IHT from 6 months after the end of the month of death. For example, if the deceased died on 15 March 2026, IHT interest starts accruing from 30 September 2026. The rate is the Bank of England base rate plus 4 percentage points — a margin that rose from 2.5 points on 6 April 2025 — and stands at 7.75% from 9 January 2026. It moves whenever Bank Rate does, so check HMRC's table before relying on it.
This means every month of additional delay adds to the IHT bill. On a £50,000 IHT liability, one extra month at 7.75% adds about £323 in interest, and six months about £1,940 — charges that resolving a compliance check promptly would have avoided.
For a detailed breakdown of how IHT interest accrues and how to minimise it, see our guide to probate delays and IHT interest charges.
If your application has been waiting longer than the published processing time, chase it rather than simply continuing to wait.
Chasing the Probate Registry:
Chasing HMRC:
Use the waiting period productively rather than chasing repeatedly without making progress:
Most probate delays are simply the result of high application volumes and processing times. But some delays signal that something specific needs your attention:
You can accept an offer and exchange contracts before probate, but you cannot complete the sale and transfer legal title until the Grant of Probate is issued. This is a common source of frustration where property sales are agreed while probate is still in progress.
Yes — HMRC will send a letter to the address provided on the IHT400. Occasionally letters are delayed or misaddressed. If you are waiting longer than 20 working days for the unique code, call the IHT helpline to check whether a compliance check has been opened.
There is no published expedite route for personal applicants. If the application is genuinely urgent — for example, a property sale at risk of falling through — you can set out the reason and the evidence when you contact the Courts and Tribunals Service Centre, but HMCTS does not publish criteria for prioritising a case, so treat it as a request rather than a process with a stated outcome.
If the estate's liquid assets are insufficient to cover the IHT due — for example, because most of the estate is in property — the options are borrowing, an executor paying from their own funds and reclaiming from the estate, or the instalment option. IHT on land and buildings, a business and certain shareholdings can be paid in 10 equal annual instalments, though interest normally runs on the outstanding balance. See our guide on paying IHT before probate.
Where the estate is solvent, IHT interest is payable by the estate, not personally by the executor. However, if an executor caused avoidable delay through negligence or inaction — for example, by failing to respond to an HMRC query — a beneficiary could theoretically bring a claim against the executor for the cost of that interest. Prompt action is always in the executor's interests.
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