New report highlights potentially hundreds of unlawful criminal record checks by employers each year
Friday, 31 July 2020
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 are no
Has an employer wrongly carried out a standard or enhanced DBS check?
Saturday, 20 June 2020
As part of our fair access to employment project we’re gathering information on employers who have carried out standard or enhanced checks where only a basic is legally permitted. For some jobs, employers are allowed to consider cautions and spent convictions (unless they have been filtered). Employers recruiting for these jobs are legally permitted to
- Published in Ineligible checks, Stop ineligible checks, What DBS disclose
Bad policies and practices by employers
Saturday, 20 June 2020
As part of our fair access to employment project, we work with employers to develop fair policies and practices and highlight good practice. We know that employers don’t always follow their own policy, and that sometimes decision making is subjective. We’re gathering evidence of bad practice and challenge this where we can – and we
- Published in Employer bad practice
Case of Lawrence – Court wrongly issued information about a spent conviction
Friday, 27 March 2020
Lawrence contacted us concerned that a crown court had provided information about his spent conviction without the proper authority. Lawrence had a spent conviction from 12 years ago which could still be found on the internet. His local residents’ association had used the information they found online to request a Certificate of Conviction from the
Case study – Bookshop potentially undertaking ineligible DBS checks
Tuesday, 25 April 2017
We were recently contacted by an individual who was considering applying for a job as a manager in a charity bookshop but had been concerned about the level of criminal record check that the company had requested. They stated that: xxxx takes its obligation to protect the rights of children and vulnerable people very
- Published in Case studies - Organisations
Kent and East Sussex council CRB checks ‘unjustified’
Thursday, 03 February 2011
We’re featured in a BBC article that has investigated the use of CRB checks by local councils. Read the article here.