Vetting

Mr. Hoyle
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how long on average it took to complete a Criminal Records Bureau check undertaken (a) by Lancashire constabulary and (b) nationwide in the latest period for which figures are available.

Meg Hillier
Data concerning the average time taken by the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) to complete a Disclosure by police force area and the average length of time for the completion of CRB clearance once police have been asked to provide this information are not collated by the Bureau.

The CRB operates to a set of published service standards (PSS) which include to issue 95 per cent. of Standard Disclosures within 10 days and 90 per cent. of Enhanced Disclosures within 28 days. Average figures do not give an accurate indication of performance, since any forces' performance can be affected by a number of factors; the volume of cases sent to a force to process in any given month, the number of staff available to process the checks and the IT resources on hand to forces. With these variables, performance can fluctuate within individual forces from one month to the next.