Ministry of Justice plan to destroy historical wills is ‘insane’, say experts

Department hopes to save £4.5m a year by digitising – then binning – about 100m wills that date back 150 years

“Sheer vandalism” and “insane”. This is how leading historians on Monday described government plans to destroy millions of historical wills to save on storage costs.

The Ministry of Justice is consulting on digitising and then throwing away about 100m paper originals of the last wills and testaments of British people dating back more than 150 years in an effort to save £4.5m a year.