Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average time taken was for the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) to (a) process a DBS application and either scan or return it to the applicant for amendments, (b) search the Police National Computer, (c) search the Children's Barred List where appropriate, (d) search the Adult's Barred list where appropriate, (e) search the records held by local police where appropriate and (f) print the DBS certificate and return all necessary documentation to the applicant in (i) the UK and (ii) Yorkshire and the Humber in each year since 2012.

A high proportion of applications to the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) are submitted electronically, and do not need to be scanned or returned.

Table 1 shows the average days taken for the DBS to scan paper applications onto the system, or return a paper application to the customer for amendments. This data is not available for the Yorkshire and Humber region. All data in Table 1 relates to the UK. Separate information for Yorkshire and the Humber region is not available.

Table 2 shows the average days taken for the DBS to search the Police National Computer, police local records and print the document, for the United Kingdom.

Table 3 shows the average days taken for DBS to search the Police National Computer, police local records and print the document for Yorkshire and Humber European electoral region.

Checks of the children and adults barred lists are carried out in parallel to the local police checks and data on the average time taken to conduct these checks cannot be provided without incurring disproportionate costs.