Vetting

(asked on 8th April 2016) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what her policy is on priority categories in Disclosure and Barring Service checks.


Answered by
Karen Bradley Portrait
Karen Bradley
This question was answered on 18th April 2016

The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) processes applications in date order and is reliant on the police completing their checks in a timely manner. In very exceptional cases, where it is apparent that a delay is likely to cause undue hardship to an applicant, the DBS will do all it can to expedite the process by raising an escalation with the relevant police force.

The table below shows the average time spent by each police force in England to process disclosure applications between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2016.

Force Name

Average Days Taken By Force

Avon And Somerset

7.4

Bedfordshire

3.5

Cambridgeshire

10.9

Cheshire

10.7

City of London

9.0

Cleveland

8.6

Cumbria

13.8

Derbyshire

14.8

Devon And Cornwall

4.7

Dorset

76.6

Durham

15.3

Essex

16.2

Gloucester

11.1

Greater Manchester

12.8

Hampshire

11.4

Hertfordshire

10.5

Humberside

9.8

Kent

18.5

Lancashire

5.0

Leicestershire

7.7

Lincolnshire

9.2

Merseyside

8.2

Metropolitan

85.2

Norfolk

1.6

North Yorkshire

17.9

Northamptonshire

17.1

Northumbria

13.9

Nottinghamshire

10.9

South Yorkshire

21.7

Staffordshire

10.7

Suffolk

8.8

Surrey

13.1

Sussex

17.5

Thames Valley

60.3

Warwickshire

7.2

West Mercia

9.3

West Midlands

21.2

West Yorkshire

12.3

Wiltshire

4.8

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