At paragraph 4.6 of the Report, the NAO referred to the decision announced on 4 November 2002 (Hansard col 102W-104W) to postpone certain mandatory checks on care staff in order to ensure that the demand for disclosures did not exceed the CRB's then capacity to meet such demand. Following the significant improvement in the Bureau's performance, the Department of Health announced, in September 2003, a timetable for the introduction of checks on care staff as follows:
- From 1 October 2003 new agency domiciliary care workers and agency nurses would require a CRB check before they could take up their placement.
- Existing care home staff and domiciliary agency staff would require a CRB check by 31 October 2004, with applications being submitted from 1 October 2003.
- Checks on existing nurses agency staff would commence once significant progress had been made on processing the estimated 250,000 Disclosure applications from existing care home and domiciliary agency staff.
Between 1 October 2003 and 29 February 2004 113,000 applications have been received from existing care home and domiciliary agency staff. Of these, 104,000 have been loaded onto the CRB's CRM system and 85,000 (75%) have been issued with a Disclosure.