probate costs
First £10,000 - 3.5%
Next £10,000 - 3.0%
Balance - 2.0%
Plus VAT @ 21% plus expenses.
This relates to an old "scale" charge from the late 1970s or early 80s. The Law Society (in the pre Competition Act era) carried out a study and found large disparities in charges on administration of estates, from less than 1% to over 8%. This scale of charges was really only the Law Society's best effort at giving a formula which seemed to represent the average amount being charged, and was never intended as more than a rough guideline. Today, many firms continue to use this as a rough guide, but it is (in my view) outmoded.
The legal costs involved in administering even an apparently simple estate can still vary widely, and I suppose a percentage charge does at least have the virtue of certainty, but even still, it would be more normal (I would have thought) to pay less than 2% at least on the real property portion of an estate. Certainly many rural practices, even those still using a percentage charge, would be more likely to charge 1% on, say, a farm, perhaps 1.5% on a house.