Do you want to help protect our access to Welsh and English wills? Family historians use wills all the time and our ability to access them through the Probate Search Service is an invaluable boon to our work. The cost of wills has been £1.50 for a number of years, but the UK Ministry of Justice has planned to raise that price to £16! That’s an almost 1000% increase![1] This change is happening on November 17th, 2025.[2]
The Ministry’s Impact Assessment has failed to consider how the price increase will affect our important work. Not only does family history enrich our lives, it also preserves the stories of our shared past and offers the public free and low-cost education.
I encourage you to let the Ministry of Justice know that our work is valuable and that their price increase stifles it. Below is a template for you to send an email in opposition to the price hike as well as a copy of the email that I sent. Remember that we came together a few years ago to save the wills and we won![3] We can win again!
Email Template
(Your email doesn’t have to be long and complicated—just honest and clear)
Send your email to: mojfeespolicy@Justice.gov.uk
“I am emailing to voice my opposition to the increase in fee for ordering wills from £1.5 to £16 as per Statutory Instrument 2025 No. 1126, 3.
This price increase impacts me because [fill in as you feel fit].
This price increase impacts the family history community because [fill in as you feel fit].
I am calling on the Ministry of Justice to take into account the importance of the family history community and reverse the price increase.
Thank you for your time.
[Your name]”
My Letter
(Feel free to use any part of my letter to help you write your own)
I am emailing to voice my opposition to the outrageous increase in fee for ordering wills from £1.5 to £16 as per Statutory Instrument 2025 No. 1126, 3.
I am an independent researcher and family historian and being able to order wills from the Probate Search Service is invaluable to my research. With the increase in cost to £16, I will be unable to continue to order wills and use them to further my research and educational work. I will not be the only one in this situation considering how popular Family History is as a pastime (the Office of National Statistics writes that the Wales & England Censuses, the core UK family history records, have been viewed around 400 million times since 2002). Many of these people are elderly and live on restricted budgets and, like me, can’t afford a 10x increase in costs for wills for use in their research. These harms to public research, education, and a community largely made up of the elderly have not been taken into account in the Impact Assessment.
Furthermore, not two years ago, I helped campaign against a poorly-devised plan to destroy the original copies of Welsh and English wills (Storage and Retention of Original Will Documents, Dec. 15, 2023), bringing it to the attention of 120,000 history-lovers, many of whom voiced their concern to me in their comments and who followed through by contributing to the public consultation. The Official Response Summary of that consultation notes that,
“In relation to responses from historical/genealogical respondents, a number made points that the consultation had failed to have sufficient regard for the family history sector, and for the increased public interest and academic focus which had led to more demand for, and interest in, wills as primary sources of data.”
Unfortunately this lack of consideration for our community and the educational value that we produce is the case once again.
I will be bringing the prohibitively-large increase in price to the attention of my community once again and I will be urging them 1) to stop or reduce their purchase of wills until a reasonable price is reinstated and 2) to voice their concern to the Ministry of Justice.
Thank you for your time.
Dai Davies of GenealCymru (They/Them)
M.A. Anthropology; B.A. hons. Anthropology & Hispanic Studies
https://www.youtube.com/GenealCymru
GenealCymru produces online educational media at the intersections of anthropology, history, heritage, and genealogy.
@GenealCymru on Youtube, Bluesky, & Substack
[1] This is a link to the UK Statutory Instrument outlining the price increase (see #3): https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2025/1126/article/3/made
[2] https://www.family-tree.co.uk/news/probate-price-rise/
[3] This is a link to an article explaining how over 1500 of us emailed the Ministry of Justice to save the wills and made a difference: https://royalhistsoc.org/ministry-of-justice-abandons-plans-to-digitise-and-destroy-print-copies-of-post-1858-wills/
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