Recommendation 12

The Cabinet Office defended the repeated policy decision to defer renewals on the grounds that it was “risk-based and a decision taken with our customers”. It acknowledged that the cumulative impact of deferring renewals for several years created additional challenges but also said that “if you have a choice between waiting nine months for someone to come in and do a critical job, or extending a renewal that has been in place for seven years and no risks have been identified with the individual, all the customers around the table agreed that that was the preferable way to go”. It said the decision to defer renewals and to prioritise new clearance applications meant that it was able to reduce the processing time for new applications to 177 days at its worst, to the current 98 days.28 However, with limited resources, prioritising one area has inevitably led to deteriorating 21 Qq 6, 35 22 Qq 36, 37 23 Q 37 24 Qq 40,41; C&AG’s 2023 Report, paras 2.9, 2.10 and Figure 9 25 Qq 43, 44, 45 26 Q 29; C&AG’s 2023 Report, para 2.5 27 C&AG’s 2023 Report, paras 2.6, 2.7 28 Qq 9, 10, 29 The performance of UK Security Vetting 13 service levels in other areas; as new DV clearances were prioritised at the start of 2022, the percentage of CTC/SC clearances that were being processed within target times slipped further.29