Changes to DBS service in England and Wales

As a result of this change we have amended our ‘General’ and ‘Regulated position’ rehabilitation of offenders declaration forms for England and Wales, copies of which are available in Citnet under ‘Stationery’.

For further details see Fact sheet 14 – Criminal convictions, regulated positions and barred persons.

Please note that if you are using an old version of the DBS Certificate application form, Question e55 must be read as though it asks: ‘Do you have any unspent convictions, cautions, reprimands or warnings?’

DBS Update Service

The new DBS Update Service went live in England and Wales on Monday 17 June 2013.

For those who use the service, the ‘Position applied for’ field (field x61) on the DBS Certificate application form now needs to be completed differently, and one of the following phrases should be included in field x61 at line 1:

Child workforce – for any position that involves working or volunteering with children.

Adult workforce – for any position that involves working or volunteering with adults.

Child and adult workforce –  for any position that involves working or volunteering with both children and adults.

Other workforce-  for any position that does not involve working or volunteering with children or adults e.g. security guard.

Using one of these phrases will ensure that any individual who is issued with a new DBS Certificate can access the Update Service (on payment of an annual subscription fee of £13.00) and will then be able to take the Certificate with them from job to job within the relevant workforce.

The DBS has also stopped issuing a copy of the applicant’s DBS Certificate to the Registered Body. This means that employers now need to ask to see a job applicant’s DBS Certificate.

One of the conditions for using the new DBS Update Service is that the employer issues a statement of their policy on the recruitment of ex-offenders to each applicant and makes a copy of the DBS Code of Practice for Registered Persons and Other Recipients of Disclosure Information available to them.

A copy of a DBS-compliant ‘Statement on the recruitment of ex-offenders’ is available in the ‘Miscellaneous’ section in Citnet, and we have also added the statement to the reverse of all our rehabilitation of offenders ‘declaration’ forms.

A copy of the DBS Code of Practice is available by Googling ‘DBS Code’ and you can register for the latest DBS news by going to: https://dbs-subscriber.homeoffice.gov.uk/