HC Deb 09 February 2004 vol 417 c1255W
Tim Loughton

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people have now been checked by the Criminal Records Bureau; and how many checks are outstanding. [143063]

Ms Blears

As of 31 January 2004 the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) had issued 3,283,723 Disclosures. The first million Disclosures were issued by the CRB within 10 months, the second million within six months and the third million within five months. This reflects the CRB's increased capacity to handle over 50,000 Disclosure applications per week.

As of 31 January 2004 the CRB has 107,219 applications outstanding (excluding those that have been returned to the customer). 03,840 of these applications are less than four weeks old with only 987 applications, approximately one per cent.of the overall total, still being processed after six weeks