Hertfordshire Constabulary has significantly improved the timeliness of checks being made as part of the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS), it has been reported.
A DBS check provides employers with information about an individual’s record for convictions, cautions and warnings from the police.
They are generally required for anyone who is seeking to work alongside children, vulnerable adults or in sensitive government or legal sectors.
Last week the timeliness of checks made by Hertfordshire Constabulary was put in the spotlight by police and crime commissioner Jonathan Ash-Edwards.
In response, Chief Constable Andy Prophet said that performance in this area had “improved significantly”. But, he said, it was not yet where he wanted it to be.
Mr Prophet pointed to a reduction in the volume of outstanding applications and in the number of applications that were “taking longer than is required”.
He told the commissioner that in early August the constabulary had been dealing with a ‘live’ caseload of 8,500 applications of which 1,500 were overdue or “beyond timescales”.
But by the end of September these numbers had been reduced to 5,500 and 261 respectively.
He said the average time taken to process a DBS application by the constabulary was now 18 days compared to a national average of 25 days.
A focus on productivity, extra resourcing and technology had helped shift the position.
He said: “We’re confident that current performance will be sustained. We should continue to see an improving position through to the end of this year, when I hope we’ll be able to say to you our cases are being progressed really quickly and we have none or very few cases outside agreed timescales.”
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