Home Department written question – answered at on 30 January 2006.
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the most recent estimate is of the time taken to process (a) a standard disclosure and (b) an enhanced disclosure by the Criminal Records Bureau; and whether the average time taken has changed since the system was introduced.
The Criminal Records Bureau's published service standards are to process 93 per cent. of standard disclosure applications within two weeks and 90 per cent. of enhanced disclosure applications within four weeks. The performance achieved for standard disclosures for December 2005 was 99 per cent. with a 12 month average of 99.4 per cent.
For enhanced disclosures, CRB are expected to complete their part of the checking process in 90 per cent. of cases in 12 days before referring these applications to local police forces for them to complete their part of the checking process against local intelligence databases.
The CRB has consistently exceeded its targets in processing disclosures up to the point at which they are referred to police forces. In December 2005, the CRB processed 95.8 per cent. of valid enhanced applications to the police within six days of receipt. This has provided forces with considerably more time to complete their checks within the published service standard.
The CRB has issued over eight million disclosures since the service was launched in March 2002 and more organisations have access to the service than ever before. Each week it is effectively dealing with over 55,000 disclosure applications. In general, the time taken to process disclosures has shortened, especially those that have been issued at the standard level, due to improvements introduced by the CRB.
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