AccessNI has recorded the busiest year in its history, processing nearly 190,000 criminal history disclosure applications during the 2025/2026 financial year. According to its newly released annual report, the Northern Ireland Department of Justice (DoJ) branch saw a 4% year-over-year surge in volume, driven by high demand for workplace screening and safeguarding compliance.

The record-breaking volume tested the agency's operational capacity, highlighting the complex operational bottlenecks that can arise when manual, multi-jurisdictional police checks are required to complete a screening file.

Tiered Disclosures and High Referral Rates

AccessNI processes applicant screening across three distinct tiers:

  • Basic: Details unspent convictions.
  • Standard: Covers the applicant's full criminal record, subject to statutory filtering.
  • Enhanced: Includes Standard data plus relevant police "non-conviction" information and, where eligible, searches against UK barred lists for working with vulnerable groups.

The report revealed that nearly 25% of all Enhanced applications had to be referred to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). Under statutory guidelines, referrals are triggered when an applicant matches a database record, is undertaking specific types of home-based employment, or has resided in the Republic of Ireland within the past five years (requiring cross-border data sharing with An Garda Siochána).

In addition, the agency intercepted five applications from individuals legally barred from working with vulnerable populations and collaborated with the ACRO Criminal Records Office to vet EU nationals from 15 member states.

The Turnaround Bottleneck

While AccessNI demonstrated strong core efficiency—issuing approximately 80% of all disclosure certificates within just two days of receipt—the surge in complex cases caused it to miss critical performance benchmarks.

The agency met four out of six time-bounded targets set by Justice Minister Naomi Long. However, it fell short of its service level agreements (SLAs) to issue 95% of enhanced checks within 21 days and 98% within 28 days.

The Compliance Takeaway: The report explicitly attributed these missed targets to "aged cases"—background files held by the PSNI for more than 25 days that require extensive, manual third-party investigation.

AccessNI has officially designated the resolution of these third-party police delays and the fulfillment of Ministerial turnaround targets as its primary operational challenge for the 2026/2027 cycle.

Read the official AccessNI report here: www.justice-ni.gov.uk/news/accessni-marks-busiest-year-ever-criminal-record-checks