Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the effect on unemployed people starting employment of the time taken by the Disclosure and Barring Service to process applications.

In the vast majority of cases, disclosure certificates are issued in a timely manner. Performance data relating to February 2016 indicates that average processing time for Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) applications was 15 days. It is important that checks undertaken are thorough and a proportion of the applications received by the DBS need to be referred to one or more police forces as part of the enhanced disclosure process.

The DBS is reliant on police forces completing their checks in a timely manner. A small number of forces have experienced difficulties in meeting the service level agreements in place between the DBS and each force. Whilst no assessment has been made of the impact of timeliness on unemployed customers, it is recognised that delays may create problems for some people. The DBS is working closely with those forces whose performance does not meet turnaround time targets. We will not compromise when it comes to the safety of children and vulnerable adults.

The number of applications to the DBS from people living in the Clacton constituency that have taken more than 60 days to process in the last 12 months is listed in the table below.