Recently, the Ministry of Justice published the long-anticipated amendments to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, these changes came into effect on the 28th November 2020. The changes are complex and will have a significant impact on vetting arrangements in education, the children’s workforce and services for vulnerable adults.
Here is a little bit of background to these changes, there had been initial amendments made to the Act in May 2013, in short this gave some guidance as to what an employer can ask an individual in relation to convictions and cautions, (for example you may have previously asked on an application form for the individual to disclose if they had any convictions) it also changed what would be disclosed on either a Standard or Enhanced DBS Certificate.
The rules updated on the 28 November 2020 mean that warnings, reprimands and youth cautions will no longer be automatically disclosed on a DBS certificate and also that the multiple conviction rule has been removed and each conviction will be considered against the remaining rule individually, this is instead of all the convictions being automatically disclosed. There will still be “specified offences” which have been agreed by Parliament and these will always be disclosed on both a Standard and Enhanced DBS certificate – click here for the full list of offences.
Our accredited Safer Recruitment Trainers are looking at what this means for you and your schools and will be advising on next steps, one of which may be an amendment to your current application form. We will be running Accredited Safer Recruitment courses (full day) and Safer Recruitment Refresher courses (1/2 Day) in January 2021 which will give you all the updated guidance and how to implement these in your school. Do not hesitate to contact the team at [email protected] for further information.
Resources
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dbs-filtering-guidance/dbs-filtering-guide
