Steps to Take to Ensure Your DBS Check is Processed Swiftly and Smoothly
Everyone who applies for a DBS Check is naturally only concerned about their own form and wants that processed as fast as possible. Clearly DBS deal with numerous checks per day and depending on what type of check has been requested, these can take longer to investigate thoroughly. The more thorough and complicated the check (Enhanced with Barred List), the longer this takes, because more information is required for it. Sometimes Basic DBS forms can be completed quite swiftly often in a few days, but there are things on forms that can slow down the process. Below are some steps to take, that will help to ensure your DBS Check is processed as fast as it can be:
Prepare Your Required Documents in Advance
- Address – Ensure you have your full address history for the past five years. This includes house number/name, road or street, and full post-code for these places. If there are any gaps in your address history, you will need to give a justification for these.
- Contact Info – You will need to have your date of birth, phone number and email address to hand for the form.
- Place of Birth – You will need the town, county and country you were born in.
- Nationality – If you have changed nationality, you will need documents that prove this.
- Unspent Convictions – If you have any you will need to list these.
- Valid ID – This will need to be government issued, such as a birth certificate, photo driving license or passport, and the DBS will need the original version and not photocopies.
Complete Your Application Online
Completing your DBS application online is one of the best things you can do, to speed up the processing time of it. There is no delay waiting for the form to reach DBS by post. There will not be any issues with the form being lost in the post. When you are completing the form online, if there are any errors or missed fields the online system will flag these up to you, preventing you from missing them, and this causing a delay in your form being processed, or your form being rejected due to missing information. If you have any queries over your form, they can be dealt with much more swiftly with an online form. With an online application, your prospective employers can get an email as soon as the DBS application is complete, which helps them to offer you the position you have applied for faster.
It can be tempting once you have filled out the form to send it off immediately. But it is best to slow down at that point and check the form through a few times thoroughly. Because by checking for errors, it will save a lot of time, if these are discovered later down the line, and slow the processing of your form down.
Checklist
- Have you missed out any information?
- Have you spelled names correctly, your own and those in addresses?
- Is any information you have put on the form now out of date?
- Have you included full address history for the past 5 years, with no gaps?
- Have you included a full work history, without any gaps?
Standard and Enhanced checks also receive input from the local police, so therefore your address history is important. If you have errors in your address history, this will slow down your application. Being accurate and paying close attention to detail when you complete the form, will help ensure the DBS check is processed swiftly and smoothly.
