Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department has taken to ensure that vacancies in the Metropolitan Police Service's Disclosure Unit are filled.

The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) provides the Home Office with monthly updates on performance. Latest figures (relating to July 2015) show that the average processing time for disclosure applications was 14.3 days. The DBS operates to a target to issue 95% of disclosure certificates within 56 days (8 weeks) and in July 95.2% were issued within this time.

DBS funding for police disclosure units in 2013-14 and 2014-15 is set out in the attached table. Decisions on the operational deployment of resources, including vacancy filling, are matters for Chief Constables in association with Police and Crime Commissioners.

The DBS is working closely with the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) to help reduce the time taken to process disclosure checks for all applicants including taxi drivers in London. The MPS has established a Gold Group, which includes DBS representation, to develop and implement a plan to improve MPS disclosure turnaround times.