Ms Helen Martin:

Once we receive the forms from the Probate Office and the original form will have been lodged, that is what starts our process. We do and we will follow this up with executors. There is a proactive element in that. If we have received a form from the Probate Office and we have not received a receipt from a solicitor, for example, from a charity stating that they have received the money, we will follow that up, so we absolutely do follow that up.

One of the issues we had and that I mentioned earlier is around the whole area of paper and the fact that it was very hard to deal with the masses of paper that we were receiving. We worked with the Probate Office and have put that whole system online now. That will enable us to do that proactive monitoring piece more easily as we will be capturing those data at source from the solicitors or executors who are putting the forms in. That means we can analyse that, and it will also be useful for the Probate Office down the road, when it modernises its systems.