Safeguarding: vetting and barring

Vetting & Barring Scheme and Criminal Records Regime Review – Recommendations.

The Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, has unveiled a new scaled back employment vetting scheme and fundamental reform of criminal records checks.

Announcing the findings of the parallel reviews of the Vetting & Barring Scheme and the criminal records regime Mr Clegg revealed that millions of people will be removed from the need to carry out compulsory pre-employment checks.

Re-modelling the Vetting & Barring Scheme (VBS)IntroductionIn its "Programme for Government", the Coalition committed to reviewing the Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS) to scale it back to common sense levels. 

The VBS had been created to help safeguard children and vulnerable adults, following the Bichard Inquiry and was designed to check the records of those who wanted to work with vulnerable groups. 

People who wished to work or volunteer with children or vulnerable adults would have had to undergo a process before starting work whereby they would have information held on them assessed. If they were assessed to pose a risk of harm to vulnerable groups then they would be barred from working or volunteering with these groups. 

This concept of checking the suitability of those working with vulnerable people was not new, barring schemes having been in use since 1926. However, there was a perception that the VBS went too far. It would have required 9.3 million people to register with, and be monitored by, the Scheme and shifted the responsibility for ensuring safe recruitment too much away from the employer and towards the state. 

Many thought the VBS, while well intentioned, was a disproportionate response to the risk posed by a small minority of people who wished to commit harm to vulnerable people and in June 2010 Ministers announced that the planned implementation of the VBS was to be halted, pending a thorough review. 

The review report has now been published and its recommendations are set out below:

Summary of the VBS remodelling review recommendations: 

  1. A state body should continue to provide a barring function to help employers protect those at risk from people who seek to do them harm via work or volunteering roles. 
  2. The Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) and Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) should be merged and a single Non-Departmental Public Body or Agency created to provide a barring and criminal records disclosure service.
  3. The new barring regime should cover only those who may have regular or close contact with vulnerable groups. 
  4. Barring should continue to apply to both paid and unpaid roles. 
  5. Automatic barring should apply for those serious offences which provide a clear and direct indication of risk. 
  6. Registration should be scrapped - there should be no requirement for people to register with the scheme and there will be no ongoing monitoring. 
  7. The information used by the state barring body (currently the ISA) to make a barring decision should be serious in nature. 
  8. Criminal records disclosures should continue to be available to employers and voluntary bodies but should be revised to become portable through the introduction of a system which allows for continuous updating.
  9. The new regime should retain current arrangements for referrals to the state barring body (currently the ISA) by employers and certain regulatory bodies, in circumstances where individuals have demonstrated a risk of harm to children or vulnerable adults. 
  10. The current appeals arrangements should be retained.
  11. The state barring body should be given a power to vary review periods in appropriate circumstances.
  12. Services relating to criminal records disclosure and barring provisions should be self-financing. We recommend the Government consults on raising the cost of the criminal records disclosure fee to cover the costs incurred. 
  13. The new system will retain two offences; it will continue to be an offence for a barred person to work with vulnerable groups in regulated activity roles. It will also be an offence for an employer or voluntary organisation knowingly to employ a barred person in a regulated activity role.
  14. Finally, the Government should raise awareness of safeguarding issues and should widely promote the part everyone has to play in ensuring proper safeguarding amongst employers, volunteer organisations, families and the wider community. 

The Terms of Reference along with the full VBS review report, can be downloaded from the Home Office website

Posted 11th March