Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of disclosure and barring service processing times on recruitment and workforce shortages; and what plans they have to bring forward measures to improve processing times.

The Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls is responsible for the policy and legislative framework governing the disclosure and barring regime.

As an Executive Non-Departmental Public Body of the Home Office, the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) is operationally independent and responsible for the service it provides. However, the Minister meets regularly with the DBS Chairman where operational performance is often discussed.

The DBS operates to service standards of completing 85% of Basic check applications within two days, 85% of Standard check applications within three days, and 80% of Enhanced check applications within 14 days. Its latest performance data against those service standards is available here DBS dataset 1: DBS checks, the DBS Update Service, and disputes - GOV.UK

Of the three types of check, only the target for Enhanced checks was not met in the most recently reported quarter, with 73.7% of all Enhanced checks completed within the target. This performance is adversely impacted mostly by delays at the police checking stage when cases are sent to police disclosure units within forces for local checks.

Unfortunately, there are a small number of police forces that have been experiencing difficulties in meeting their target times for Enhanced checks due to high volumes of work in progress, aged cases and ongoing resource challenges. The DBS works closely with these affected forces to help them return to their target times as quickly as possible, including by providing funding for overtime and additional staff whilst the forces recruit and train new staff to process the checks. The DBS also facilitates workload sharing between police forces so that forces with capacity can help those forces that are struggling.

To assess its broader impact, the DBS carries out regular employer surveys, including seeking feedback on the timeliness and quality of DBS checks. It also completes regular analyses of open-source employment data throughout the year to support demand planning to align the predicted number of DBS check applications with the workforce capacity needed to complete and issue the checks to customers in a timely way.