Examples of bad practice by employers
Earlier this year Alex registered with Transport for London’s National Apprenticeship Fair, hoping for the chance to meet with 15 employers offering vacancies across London. She was surprised to be asked about unspent convictions for a recruitment fair, but ticked the box and looked for the privacy policy to understand how it would be used. […]
In 2018 research by Unlock found that 70% of well-known national employers asked about criminal records on application. Three years on, with increased understanding of data protection, the GDPR and inclusive recruitment, we reviewed those employers to see what, if anything had changed. Key findings in 2018 The 2018 findings were disappointing, though perhaps not […]
Unlock, a national advocacy charity for people with criminal records, has today published Checked out?, a report on so-called ‘ineligible’ criminal record checks, submitted by employers and processed by the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS). The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 allows some criminal records to become spent after a crime-free period. This means they […]
RQT, an IT company based in Wales, required all potential employees to consent to a basic criminal record check being carried out by a DBS Responsible Organisation (RO). As the job was in Wales, the RO should have requested a check from the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS). Instead the RO wrongly requested a check […]