THE new Criminal Record Bureau (CRB) is creating havoc for Darlington's taxi drivers, they say.

The bureau, which was formed to carry out criminal record checks nationally for all organisations wishing to vet prospective employees, has taken over the role from local police.

Now, instead of the previous week-long wait for checks to come back to the local authority, new taxi drivers are having to wait a month or longer for their application to be approved or declined.

In addition, the service now costs prospective drivers a fee of £12.

Barry Pearson, commercial licensing manager for Darlington Borough Council, told a meeting of the authority's licensing committee yesterday that the council was doing all it could to try to alleviate problems.

He said: "For those drivers who are renewing licences and have indicated to us that they have no convictions, we are issuing a licence on a monthly basis while we wait for the CRB checks to come back.

"If anything comes to light in that time we can suspend the licence.

"This is not satisfactory, but it is the best we can offer until the CRB quicken up the process.

"New applicants, though, are having to wait for the checks to come back because it is not in the public interest to grant a licence for someone whose history we do not know.

"They could be working with vulnerable people."