Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he plans to take to improve the performance of the Disclosure and Barring Service.

The DBS publishes its KPIs in the annual business plan. By the end of Quarter 3 2023/24, DBS expects to have met the 85% target for Basic and Standard checks. For Enhanced checks, the DBS aims to issue 80% of checks within 14 days. In quarter 2 2023/24, the average attainment was 77.2% (noting the 80% target was met on day 17).

An Enhanced check requires the DBS to send applications to the police for local data searches and local intelligence checks. Currently some police forces’ turnaround times have been affected by increased volumes of disclosure applications against original forecasts. To improve performance, extra funding has been provided to police forces to recruit more staff to service the additional demand for Enhanced DBS checks that is being seen across the regulated employment sector. The DBS is also working in collaboration with policing partners to enhance the quality of an enhanced criminal record check referral to improve turnaround times.

The DBS continues to modernise its services through the replacement of legacy IT systems and is working to deliver further digitisation of its disclosure products to further enhance performance outcomes.