Jobs that require a DBS check


For some jobs, the position is more complicated. These are jobs covered by the Exceptions Order to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (the Exceptions Order). They include working with children or vulnerable adults. Applicants for these jobs are not allowed to stay silent if asked by an employer about spent convictions and they must also undergo criminal records checking, now called a Disclosure and Barring Check.


The criminal records checking regime was put in place by the Police Act 1997. The checks are now carried out by the Disclosure and Barring Service, a division of the Home Office, and involve a search of the Police National Computer. The search will disclose “any relevant matter”, which includes both spent and unspent convictions and can also include cautions, police reprimands and final warnings (subject to new “filtering” measures for old and minor offences described below).


There are three levels of DBS check:


• standard level: for an occupation included in the Exceptions Order;


• enhanced level: for an occupation included in the Exceptions Order and the Police Act (Criminal Records) Regulations; and


• enhanced check with Children’s and/or Adults’ Barred List: to find out whether someone is listed as unsuitable for working with children or vulnerable adults. 


The DBS certificate is only seen by the prospective employer and the applicant. A DBS check should only be carried out on a successful job applicant. The job offer can be made conditional on a clear DBS check and can then be withdrawn if anything is disclosed that makes the applicant unsuitable. About four million DBS checks are carried out each year. 


An important change was made to the law in 2013, after a court ruled that criminal records checks revealing all past cautions and offences, however old or irrelevant, even those dating from childhood, infringe Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to privacy) (R (T) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] 1 AC 49).


In response, the government has changed the law so that some old and minor offences and convictions must now be “filtered”, so that they do not appear on a standard or enhanced level DBS check. These offences must not be taken into account by an employer. Employers should not ask about them, and they need not be disclosed.


However, many offences can never be filtered, will always appear on the DBS certificate and must be disclosed on request by the employer when applying for a job that needs a DBS check. The DBS has published a list of offences that can never be filtered from a DBS Check. There is also a DBS Filtering Guide for employers. 


An employer carrying out criminal records checks must have a policy in place on employing ex-offenders which must be shown to any applicant on request.


Employers providing care services for adults, for example, in a care home, can use an extra service called DBS Adult First, which will confirm, usually within two days, whether the applicant can start work under supervision, or alternatively whether they must wait for the results of an enhanced check.


Job applicants can now register their details with the government’s online Disclosure and Barring Update Service. The applicant must pay an annual fee of £13, and in return, prospective employers can search online to check that their DBS certificate is valid and up to date. The service is free of charge to the employer (i.e. it is funded by job applicants). There is no fee for volunteers. The progress of DBS checks can be tracked online. 


Since March 2015, it is a criminal offence to require any job applicant or existing worker to obtain a copy of their full criminal record by using a data subject access request under the Data Protection Act 1998 (section 56, DPA 98). Some employers had been using this tactic to force applicants to reveal their spent convictions.