Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps the Government is taking to reduce waiting times for checks by the Disclosure and Barring Service; and what support is being given to local police forces to help with the workload these checks require of them.

The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) process over 4 million checks every year and operate to published service standards set out here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dbs-business-plan-2018-2019 The Home Office, as the sponsoring Department for the DBS, monitors performance to track attainment of these standards.

The Home Office has published statutory guidance to assist chief officers of police to provide the correct information for enhanced criminal record certificates. The guidance is published here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/statutory-disclosure-guidance

The DBS monitor and work closely with local police forces to minimise any delays to applications being processed. All police force disclosure unit performance data is published in line with DBS’ publication scheme. This can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/dbs-dataset-5-police-disclosure-unit-performance