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 […]
Unlock’s Helpline received a call from an applicant concerned with the wording on a job advertised by Humres Engineers, a recruitment agency specialising in engineering roles. The job description, for a Lighting Protection Mate, included this statement: Some of the clients are schools/educational establishments so candidates MUST be happy to go through a full DBS […]
The Greek arm of PriceWaterhouseCoopers have been fined €150,000 after an investigation found they were unlawfully relying on employees’ consent to process personal data. PWC claimed to be relying on consent but data was in fact processed to comply with contract obligations. By allowing employees to believe that their data was being processed with their […]
Lawrence contacted us about a post advertised at a university in the Midlands. The job, Head of Business Programmes, involved working with departments within the university and developing relationships with external partners. Lawrence was surprised then to see that the job description said the post would involve an enhanced DBS check. It wasn’t clear why […]
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 […]
Following an enquiry to our helpline, we became aware that a leading charity were requesting an enhanced DBS check for an office administrator’s role. From the information provided, we were of the opinion that the role would be covered by the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act and would only require a basic DBS check. Therefore, by […]
We were contacted recently by an individual who was concerned about a question being asked about criminal records on a builder’s merchant’s application form, which stated: “As part of our standard procedure we require a police check for every employee. Are you prepared to undergo a police check? ☐ Yes ☐ No Have you ever […]
We were contacted recently by an individual who had some concerns about the questions that a global manufacturing company were asking about criminal records on their employment application form. The form stated: “Have you ever been convicted of a criminal offence? (Including motor offences but excluding parking fines) Have you ever received a formal police […]