Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the target time frames is for processing firearms licences.

Firearms licensing is administered by the police. The Home Office does not hold information about the time taken by forces to process firearms licences.

There is ongoing work by government and the police to improve the efficiency of the system. An important component for this is the development of an onlinesystem called eCommerce which is being developed by the police as part of a business change programme to standardise and improve turnaround times.

Information about the number of firearms certificates issued in each region of England and Wales is published in "Firearm and Shotgun Certificates in England and Wales 2013/14" which is available on the GOV.UK website at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/firearm-and-shotgun-certificates-in-england-and-wales-financial-year-ending-march-2014/firearm-and-shotgun-certificates-in-england-and-wales-financial-year-ending-march-2014

Information relating to the number of certificates issued in Scotland can be found on the Scottish Government website at:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2014/10/4039/0

The Police Service of Northern Ireland lists its statistical outputs on the PSNI Statistics page of its website at:
http://www.psni.police.uk/directory/updates/updates_statistics.htm. However, there are no series of statistics that are directly comparable to those for England and Wales or Scotland.