Modernisation is not always a good idea. For most of my working life the Government owned Probate Registries have done their job quiety and efficiently. So well that most people were not aware they even existed. When a death occurred the executors or their solicitors would complete the neccessary forms, send then into the Probate Registry and a few weeks later the Grant of Probate would be received. Armed with that the assets could then be collected in and passed on to the beneficiaries . Simple .
Then modernisation began. Most of the regional probate registries were closed. A lot of the experienced staff were "retired" Suddenly we were dealing with a few centralised offices staffed by junior people who worked by ticking boxes.. Waiting times soared. For a long while appications were not even being looked at for 6 months or more. Any enquiries about progress were ignored Trying to get a question about procedure was imposible. applications would be rejected by one registry for "mistakes" while identical applications would be accepted by another registry with no problem.
End result Whereas we used to be able to predict reasonbly accurately how long an application would take to be processed now its pot luck Depending on which probate registry the application has been allocated to...not always the one you posted it to as they juggle workloads around....which individual is dealing with it and whether they think there is a fault or not. And when it does get dealt with half the time the Grant sent back is wrong. misspelt names or addresses and so on
And as far as I can tell there have been no saving in running costs...well there seldom is when the modernisers get involved