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The latest DBS figures, showing how quickly disclosure checks are turned around in various parts of the country have recently been released. Although the main focus of the figures is about time and targets, but if you dig a bit deeper into the figures there are some other facts which stand out too. One of the main revelations is around the number of people who are enrolling in the DBS Update service, which remains low.

If you work in a business with people who need DBS checks then there may be occasions when you need to report them to the DBS. This is called a barring referral. There is a lot of misunderstanding about DBS checks and barring, who can make them and what the end result of a referral may be.

Around the world, thousands of schools are following the British school system. There are a few reasons why this is the case. Firstly, it’s often a throwback to the past, where many countries around the world formed part of the British empire. In other countries, learning English is thought to be so important that parents want to send their kids to international schools, staffed by British teachers. Finally, many countries have a high number of UK expat workers, who want continuity for their children by choosing to send them to an international school. However, a recent announcement by the DBS has changed the way in which schools overseas check up on teachers.

Along with your name and date of birth, your address is one of the key pieces of information which you need for a DBS check. Recent changes in the rules about your address history make it more important than ever to get the address history correct. So what exactly do you need to know about your address?

Bosses at the taxi app company Uber are anxiously waiting to find out whether their application for a licence to operate in London again has been granted. It’s hard to believe that Uber only started operating in the UK in 2012, having launched first in San Francisco two years earlier. Although initially offering rides all over the UK capital, Uber had its licence withdrawn in 2017 after worries about the way they were checking up on their drivers. If Uber regains the right to operate in the capital, are you safe getting into an Uber cab?

Our legal system is constantly evolving, with new crimes being added all the time, and old laws being struck from the record. To complicate matters further, Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate legal systems from England and Wales, and this makes things complex when applying for DBS or Disclosure checks. One recent ruling has clarified the position for men convicted under repealed legislation, who faced having past convictions listed on DBS checks.

Every so often, there’s a news story about someone who has lost out on their dream job because of delays in processing their DBS certificate. The government had set targets for disclosure processing times and although performance has improved considerably over the past couple of years, a significant minority of checks are still taking a lot longer than the main target of 14 days. If you’re caught up in DBS delays what are your rights?

Lots of companies across the UK decide to outsource their DBS checks to an external provider rather than run all the checks in-house. There are lots of reasons for doing this, so is it something you should be thinking about doing for your own organisation?

Many people believe that disclosure checks are only needed for people working with children. In fact, the system is much more extensive than that and covers a wide range of people who are in positions of responsibility too. However, for many people it will still seem strange that the latest occupation to be added to the list for checks are garage owners. What’s going on, and why do these people need standard DBS checks?

One of the biggest buzzwords currently in disclosure checking is filtering. Journalists and experts throw the word around as if everyone knows what it means but in reality, there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what filtering is and how it works.