Speeches

Jeff Smith – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jeff Smith on 2016-10-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average processing time was for applications to the Disclosure and Barring Service for each police force area in England for the most recent year for which figures are available.

Sarah Newton

In the last 12 months (1 October 2015 – 30 September 2016), the proportion of disclosure applications which took longer than 60 days was as follows: (a) the UK – 5.4%, (b) Manchester – 3.9%, (c) Manchester Withington – 2.8%. The Disclosure and Barring Service is reliant on police forces completing their checks in a timely manner and is working closely with those forces whose performance does not meet turnaround time targets. The average time taken in days to process disclosures checks in the last three years is as follows:

Time Period

Average waiting time – United Kingdom

Average waiting time – Manchester Withington

Oct-13 to Sep-14

13.4

12.0

Oct-14 to Sep-15

14.4

12.1

Oct-15 to Sep-16

15.5

12.6

The average processing time for applications to the DBS for each police force area in England from 1 October 2015 to 30 September 2016 is set out in the table below. This shows the average number of days each application took from the point at which the application form was received to the date the certificate was issued, broken down by the applicant’s geographical police force area. This information reflects all applications sent to the DBS, of which a proportion are sent to police forces for consideration for disclosure.

Police Force Area in which applicant lives

Average time taken in calendar days

Metropolitan

28.1

Cumbria

11.5

Lancashire

11.6

Merseyside

12.1

Greater Manchester

14.1

Cheshire

11.1

Northumbria

13.9

Durham

11.9

North Yorkshire

14.1

West Yorkshire

12.7

South Yorkshire

19.8

Humberside

12.2

Cleveland

13.5

West Midlands

10.3

Staffordshire

9.6

West Mercia

11.9

Warwickshire

9.4

Derbyshire

14.1

Nottinghamshire

11.7

Lincolnshire

10.5

Leicestershire

9.4

Northamptonshire

17.9

Cambridgeshire

10.1

Norfolk

9.1

Suffolk

9.9

Bedfordshire

11.6

Hertfordshire

14.8

Essex

14.2

Thames Valley

16.1

Hampshire

14.2

Surrey

14.1

Kent

15.8

Sussex

11.9

City of London

11.9

Devon & Cornwall

11.3

Avon And Somerset

10.7

Gloucester

10.7

Wiltshire

10.2

Dorset

26.8

For a breakdown of how long police forces take to process applications they receive; this information is regularly published on the DBS website and can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/dbs-performance