FOI release

SIA processing times and non-conviction information refusals

Published 2 May 2025

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sia-processing-times-and-non-conviction-information-refusals/sia-processing-times-and-non-conviction-information-refusals

Request

  1. How many times has the SIA taken more than 31 days to make a decision on a licence application?
  2. How many people have undergone further investigation and been refused licences because of events prior to their application that did not result in a conviction, even though they were previously granted a licence at renewal?
  3. How long do appeals usually stay open and and what is the longest that one has remained open?

Response

I can confirm that the SIA does hold this information.

Caveats that apply to this data

The following caveats apply to this data:

  1. Court appeals have not been considered as they are not registered on STeP, the SIA’s application system.
  2. Appeals included are for those submitted to the SIA within 21 days of a decision being sent to the applicant. Appeals may be directly submitted to the court but these are not included in the figures provided.
  3. The figures relate to the previous calendar year of 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2024.
  4. Licences in this data-set were refused because of non-conviction information and no other reason.

The data

In 2024, 197,591 decisions were taken, of which 16,757 applications took longer than 31 calendar days to reach.

In the same year, 199 applicants who had previously held an active SIA licence were refused under our non-conviction information criteria.

On average, the appeals for those applicants took 33 working days. The longest took 193 working days.

[Ref: FOI 0550]

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