Category: DBS News and Advice

Even before the pandemic hit the UK, the DBS was looking for new ways to communicate with people who have questions about their service or want to track the progress of their application. As part of the more general shift to online services across government departments, the DBS announced the roll-out of a new webchat service for DBS applicants back in April 2022.

Although it’s a job seeker’s market in terms of finding a new job at the moment, employers are not allowing their standards to slip when it comes to vetting the people they want to employ. Employers know only too well that getting a recruitment decision wrong can affect their profits if the new employee performs poorly or turns out to be a security risk. Background checking is usually applied across the board or targeted at specific job positions. If you are applying for a position and then are told that background checking is required, then don’t take it personally. It’s very unlikely that the employer has decided to run extra checks on just you. There are five major categories of background checks which an employer can use, and an employer may choose to use just one, or several.

The idea of performing background checking on people in specific roles is nothing new and is particularly associated with people who intend to work with children. The internet and digital technologies have made it easier than ever for employers to carry out checks on people working for them, and to thoroughly assess job applicants. Statistics from Google show that employers are searching for “best background checking site” twice as much in 2022 as they were in 2021, so if you’re in the market for a new position, it may be something you’ll come up against too.

On 1 April 2022, the laws around people licensed to carry out MOT tests changed. Thousands of garages across the UK carry out MOT tests on cars, vans and other vehicles every year, and the government’s aim is to make sure that not only are testers all testing to the same standard, but also that there is no room for fraud in the system. There are many ways in which this is done, but one of the most recent changes has been the introduction of DBS criminal records checks for MOT testing staff.

Although the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic is – thankfully – over, some of the changes made during the last two years appear to be here to stay. Hybrid working, with workers spending perhaps two days a week in the office and the rest working from home has become commonplace. In a recent industry survey, over half of business owners who were surveyed stated that they expect their business to full embrace flexible working going forward.

We primarily associate the Disclosure and Barring Service with the disclosure checking process – the criminal records checks which are carried out on many new employees. But this isn’t all they do, and recently the DBS has teamed up with campaign groups JobsAware and Cifas to raise awareness of scam practices in the jobs market, and let people know about how any information gained through a scam might go on to be used in the future.

Back in 1989, the Protection of Children Act introduced a new register which was known as the POCA list, or Protection of Vulnerable Children. The similarly named POVA list is the comparable list for dealing with vulnerable adults. The abbreviations POCA and POVA are still in common use, but the official terminology has changed, and since 2009 the lists have been replaced by the Children’s and Adults’ Barred Lists, which are managed by the Independent Safeguarding Authority. The idea behind these lists is the same, in that they contain the names of people who have been formally blocked from working with children or adults.

When Russian troops started to move into Ukraine at the end of February 2022, the response from the European public was swift. Initially, money flooded into charities, and vans were loaded up to take essential supplies into Poland for the thousands of Ukrainian refugees. It soon became apparent however that a longer-term solution would be needed for housing, and the UK government launched the Homes for Ukraine scheme on 18 March 2022. Within the first few weeks of the scheme, a reported 200,000 people across England had signed up. But what does the scheme entail?

Recruitment was turned on its head during the Covid-19 pandemic, with more people than ever working from home. We all had to get used to Zoom meetings rather than meeting colleagues in person, and getting applicants for a job into the office for an interview became impossible too. Remote recruitment poses its challenges, and even as we move back into having more people in the office, many employers are retaining remote recruitment as a way of cutting costs and time. But are there any disadvantages to recruiting in this way for either recruiter or candidate?

Back in 1974, new legislation was passed which was designed to help people who had been convicted of crimes to slot back into life and make a fresh start. The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 allows people not to disclose older convictions in many situations, such as when applying for a job or buying insurance. There are limits to the Act, which means that most convictions resulting in more than 4 years in prison cannot ever be considered spent. For other convictions and cautions, they will be deleted from your record in most circumstances after a set period of time.