Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many applications for a Security Industry Authority licence have been outstanding for more than (a) one month and (b)(i) three and (ii) six months.

As at 8 December 2020, the SIA had 8,034 applications awaiting a decision. Of these, 4,021 had been outstanding for 29 days or less and 2,039 outstanding for between 30 days and 3 months. 946 had been outstanding for 3 months and 1 day to 6 months. The remaining 1,028 had been outstanding for over 6 months and 1 day.

The SIA receives an average of 140,000 individual licence applications per year. The reasons applications are held open over 25 days are mainly due to action required by third parties or information from the applicant, for example, awaiting medical consents and/or reports, overseas criminality certificate exceptions (requiring sworn oaths and acceptable character references) or the results from criminality disclosure agencies and/or overseas embassies in the case of overseas checks.