7
Accepted
Cabinet Office lacks evidence on job abandonment caused by security vetting delays.
Recommendation
The Cabinet Office could not provide us with any information on how many people were abandoning jobs due to vetting delays. The NAO reported that cancellations of clearance requests were 19% higher from April to November 2022 compared with the same period in 2021–22, and that requests were most likely cancelled because the individual being vetted secured an alternative job. The Cabinet Office said at our February session that it had done further research following the NAO report and expanded on the list of reasons why individuals may no longer need a clearance, such as retirement, moving to a job with lower security status or simply failing to provide the information in time and therefore being timed out. It claimed that “the cancellations are not people pulling out of the process” and that “for the moment at least, there does not seem to be any evidence that, even in a very competitive job market, the vetting process is losing good candidates”. The Cabinet Office also considered that the increase in cancellations was proportionate to the overall increase in the number of cases received.16 Poor demand forecasting and lack of resilience
Government Response Summary
The government agrees to address vetting delays by March 2024, outlining the Delivery Stabilisation Programme's success in improving productivity, reducing turnaround times, and committing surge resources to stabilize vetting services by specific milestones.
Government Response
Accepted
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
1.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: March 2024 1.2 United Kingdom Security Vetting (UKSV) has significantly enhanced productivity through the first phase of the Delivery Stabilisation Programme (DSP) which seeks to address the immediate operational performance challenge and recover vetting services. Strong progress has been made in Financial Year 2022-23 and UKSV is now completing 9.4% more Security Check (SC) / Counter Terrorist Check (CTC) and 52% more Developed Vetting (DV) cases each month on average. Completion levels for DV clearances in the DSP are the highest on record since UKSV’s inception in 2017, and turnaround times for initial DV clearances (DVi) have reduced by over half. UKSV plans to meet the agreed customer key performance indicator (KPI) for DVi in June 2023 and to sustain performance thereafter. 1.3 To ensure continued progress, UKSV have mobilised a secondary phase of the DSP with a full programme wrap around in place. Ministers have agreed a significant injection of surge resources into UKSV for financial year 2023-24 including His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs Surge personnel and operational staff. UKSV have set out the following milestones to fully stabilise vetting services: a) DV Initials fully stabilised by the end of June 2023 b) SC/CTC fully stabilised by the end of September 2023 c) DV Reviews fully stabilised by the end of March 2024 1.4 UKSV will continue to focus on sustainable changes to drive productivity and efficiency in order to maintain performance levels. This will primarily be achieved through quick win process efficiencies, as well as larger automation and technological changes that will drive productivity in the existing environment but can also be repurposed as UKSV migrates to the new platform under the Vetting Transformation Programme (VTP).
Source
Committee
Public Accounts Committee
Report
Fifty-Third Report - The performance of UK Security Vetting
12 May 2023
HC 994
Addressee Bodies
HM Treasury
Timeline
Recommendation age
3.2 yrs
Report published
12 May 2023