Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of processing times for manual Disclosure and Barring Service certificates; and whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of adding manual certificates to the DBS update service.

Manual certificates are only used in rare circumstances when an automated DBS certificate cannot be issued, for example if the applicants’ name or relevant information from the Police National Computer exceeds a certain number of characters, or for certain applications which are submitted via the Sensitive applications route.

DBS aims to complete them within the usual published processing standards which can be viewed at: DBS dataset 1: DBS checks, the DBS Update Service, and disputes - GOV.UK.

Given the small numbers involved and their alignment to the automated checks processing times, there are currently no specific concerns relating to manually processed certificates. As manual certificates are produced offline, they cannot be added to the Update Service as there is no automated facility to continuously monitor the certificate status.