New report highlights potentially hundreds of unlawful criminal record checks by employers each year and the lack of action by government in preventing them

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 […]

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Midlands university risks carrying out ineligible checks

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 […]

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Leading charity requesting an ineligible criminal record check for an administrative role

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 […]

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Lecturer post in a university not eligible for an enhanced DBS check

We’ve recently worked on a case where a university had stated in a job description for a Lecturer in Criminology that: “The successful applicant will have to undergo a DBS check before an appointment can be made.” Although the job description didn’t specify what level of check, the university confirmed that they would be carrying […]

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Providing training courses to apprentices doesn’t make all employees eligible for DBS checks

We’ve recently been involved in a case where a training provider offering vocational and online courses to apprentices was requesting an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check for an individual being employed as an account manager. The primary role of the account manager was to liaise with the training company’s current partners and to […]

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Ineligible check leads to DBS considering adding employee to adult’s and children’s barred list

We’ve recently been involved in a case where a local council has, by their own admission, carried out an ineligible enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service check which has resulted in an individual being considered for inclusion on the adult and children’s barred lists. The individual concerned had been working for the council for many years […]

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The problem with doing blanket enhanced DBS checks on all employees

We’ve recently been involved in a case where a refrigeration/air-conditioning company were looking to carry out enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service checks on all their service engineers irrespective of where they would be working. The company concerned had just bought out another company and had taken on several new contracts. They had transferred over existing […]

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Employer does a standard Disclosure and Barring Service check for an unregulated role

We’ve recently worked on a case where an individual had a job offer withdrawn following an ineligible check being undertaken by an employer. The job involved selling IT systems to financial institutions and in his offer of employment the company stated that: “The company is not regulated by the FCA although a majority of the […]

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