Post-1858 England and Wales civil probate records

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

"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.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/dec/18/ministry-of-justice-plan-to-dest...

The Guardian article doesn't actual say, but they must be talking about the post-1858 England and Wales civil probate records. I know this isn't the "Pros & Cons" group, but I think it's not unreasonable to say that this is madness plain and simple.

I can only hope that it is a ploy to secure extra money in an age of continual Westminster government cuts to unsexy / non-party political / non-culture war budgets.