§ Mr. BurnsTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how long on average it took to process an application for screening for criminal records of care home workers in(a) July 2002,(b) October 2002,(c) January 2003,(d) April 2003 and (e) July 2003. [127463]
§ Paul GogginsThe information is not available in the form requested, as there are currently no IT procedures to extract this information from the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) database. It is expected that, as systems develop, this information will become available at some point in the future.
Average turnaround times for Standard and Enhanced Disclosures during the periods specified are shown in the table:
Days Standard Enhanced July 2002 16.71 21.04 October 2002 16.75 32.00 January 2003 26.00 47.72 April 2003 12.27 23.18 July 2003 19.25 25.91 The turnaround times for January are higher than usual because of lost production days between Christmas and New Year due to staff holidays, and a training and consolidation exercise of new PNC procedures.
The CRB has been steadily improving its performance since October 2002. The increase in July can be attributed to a surge in applications during the last two weeks in June in advance of the increase in fees which came into effect on 1 July. Approximately 50,000
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Prisons: operational capacity and population at end of June for each year 2002 2001 2000 Prison Population Capacity Population Capacity Population Capacity Acklington 111 787 782 782 763 782 Albany 441 446 446 446 439 446 Altcourse1 1,004 965 773 850 838 900 Ashfield 319 400 387 400 316 400 Ashwell 481 494 378 386 481 494 Askham Grange 135 141 128 132 113 132 Aylesbury 351 352 355 352 349 355 Bedford 447 440 396 422 353 400 Belmarsh 857 869 829 935 821 869 Birmingham 910 900 830 850 1,027 1,080 Blakenhurst 855 850 817 850 844 850 Blantyre House 120 120 118 120 115 120 Blundestone 421 424 414 424 408 424 Brinsford 464 493 454 493 473 493 extra applications were received in addition to the Bureau's normal intake at that time of about 43,000 applications per week. While these extra applications temporarily increased the turnaround times for applications, the CRB nevertheless continued to meet its service standard targets.