Sometimes it pays to contact your elected official! The following
information was shared with me by David Lewin in London, England
sent to him via his member of Parliament. Justice Minister thanked
David for his suggestions to improve the service for the provision
of copies of documents resulting in the new changes below.

UK Justice Minister Chris Grayling announced effective September 30
that the Probate Service launched an online probate search facility.
Customers can now access probate records >from 1996 to the present
day for a fee of £10 and order a copy of the grant which will be
provided in 10 days. When an order is placed the customer will
receive notification by email that the order has been received and
when the document is available for download a further email will be
sent. Payments may be made by debit or credit card.

More information may be found on the

https://www.gov.uk/search-will-probate

website. The service is now working to provide all 41 million of its
records dating back to 1858 online and will release that date shortly.
It is also looking for a 10-day turn around once they know the levels
of demand for the service. I tried it and it works very easily!
Results show first and surnames, date of probate, probate number, date
of death, document type and registry. To read the document you must
pay the £10.

This is for England and Wales only. A different process is in place
for Scotland: http://www.nas.gov.uk/ and in Northern Ireland:
http://www.proni.gov.uk/

Thank you to David Lewin for sharing this information.

Jan Meisels Allen
Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee