Julian Knight – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julian Knight on 2016-01-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if the Government will take steps to assist with the backlog of Disclosure and Barring Service applications.

Karen Bradley

The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) aims to process all certificates within 56 calendar days and nationally DBS meets this target. The vast majority of applicants do receive their certificates in a timely manner and in December the average processing time for DBS applications was 15.3 days.

It is important that checks undertaken are thorough and sometimes the DBS needs to refer an application to one or more local police forces as part of the enhanced certificate checking process. Unfortunately, a small number of forces have been experiencing difficulties in completing their checks within expected timescales.

DBS has been working closely with forces who are not meeting performance targets to ensure that their performance improves as quickly as possible. The Home Office is taking a keen interest in this work.