PROBATE delays are forcing more than half of the UK’s charities to cut back on essential services, a new survey suggests.

The study of 101 charity chief executives was conducted by Rathbones, which is responsible for £9.4 billion in funds under management for more than 3000 charities.

Almost all participants in the study (99 per cent) reported that they were currently affected by hold-ups in obtaining probate — the legal right to deal with someone’s property, money, and possessions when they die.

A severe backlog of probate applications, which pre-dates the Covid pandemic, has meant that the average waiting time more than doubled between April 2022 to April 2023. Applicants have waited more than 11 months for probate to be granted.

Gifts in wills currently raise about £4 billion annually for UK charities. The Rathbones study finds that more than one in eight (13 per cent) of the executives surveyed said that their charity had been “very badly affected” by the delays in probate.

About 80 per cent said that their charity’s recruitment programme had been adversely affected. More than half (51 per cent) said that delays had forced cutbacks on the vital services provided by the charity. Just under half (43 per cent) had had to sell off assets, such as property, to fill the financial gap; more than one quarter (27 per cent) had had to make redundancies.

The study also found that, on average, 14 per cent of each charity’s annual income was currently being held up by probate; but 42 per cent of charities reported that this figure represented between 15 and 30 per cent of their income.

Most executives questioned expected the logjam in probate processing to ease in the future. Half (50 per cent) believed that these delays would improve over the next two years.

The head of charities at Rathbones, Andy Pitt, said: “Significant delays with probate are causing charities to miss out on millions of pounds of income. . . The logjam is not only adding to the financial stress of grieving families, with property sales falling through or having to pay interest payments on inheritance tax — but is also resulting in many senior charity executives having to make difficult decisions on how to cope with hindered cash flow . . . and it’s impossible to budget or plan.”