Tulip Siddiq – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tulip Siddiq on 2016-01-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many (a) requests were made for and (b) individuals passed Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) adult first checks in each year since 2012; what the average time taken was for that check to be carried out; and how many of those passed subsequently failed their DBS check, and were therefore not issued with a DBS certificate.

Karen Bradley

The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) Adult First is a service provided by the Disclosure and Barring Service that can be used in cases where, exceptionally, and in accordance with the terms of Department of Health guidance, a person is permitted to start work with adults before a DBS Certificate has been obtained.

An individual neither passes nor fails an Adult First check and a certificate is not withheld if a person is on the Adults barred list. If a person is on the list, that fact will be disclosed on the completed DBS certificate.

There are two outcomes to an Adult First check and the Registered Body is either advised that no match exists for this person on the current Adults barred list, or they must wait for the full disclosure as a match against the Adults barred list cannot be ruled out at this stage. Further investigation is then carried out through the normal disclosure checking process and if a match against the Adults barred list is confirmed, it will be disclosed on the certificate.

The table below shows the number of requests that were made for DBS Adult First checks, the average time taken to complete Adult First checks and the number of times the Registered Body received a ‘wait for the full disclosure’ or ‘no match found’ response between December 2012 and November 2015.