Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for how long since the date of initial application the longest outstanding disclosure and barring check has been outstanding.

The longest outstanding application for an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Certificate is 25 months.

It would not be appropriate to comment further on this specific case, but there are a number of factors which can affect the timely completion of checks. These include the length of time it can take for an employer to deal with the initial application, the accurate completion of the application form, the clarity of the information provided, the existence of conviction or non-conviction information, legal challenges and the operational effectiveness of the disclosure units of the police forces involved in the enhanced process.

In some cases, forces will ask DBS to clarify some details provided by the applicant which requires further investigation and this can cause further delays.