The council is committed to fair treatment of existing and prospective employees. Subject to its responsibilities to protect children and vulnerable adults, the council aims to treat all applicants fairly and not discriminate unfairly on the basis of offending background.
Some of the council’s jobs involve working with children or vulnerable adults. These posts are exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. This means that we are entitled to know about all previous convictions, both spent and unspent. Applicants for exempted posts are required to declare all convictions, cautions, reprimands or warnings. This is regardless of when it was and what it was for.
The council is also entitled to undertake criminal record checks on all successful applicants using the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB). This also includes checks on lists held by the Department for Children, Schools and Families of people who are banned from working with children and vulnerable adults. Depending on the level of contact, the council will undertake checks on successful applicants at one of two levels as follows:
- Standard Disclosure - Regular contact with children or vulnerable adults but not working directly with such groups.
- Enhanced Disclosure - Substantial contact with children or vulnerable adults where an individual is responsible for ‘caring for, training, supervising or being in sole charge’ of such groups. This level of check also applies to all posts working in schools regardless of level of contact.
The employee specification for each job will indicate whether the post requires a standard or enhanced disclosure.
Having a criminal record will not necessarily stop an individual from being employed by the council. This will only happen if it is considered that it makes the person unsuitable for the post. We will consider the nature of the offence, how long ago it was and the age of the person when it was committed. We will also consider any other factors that may be relevant.
Failure to reveal information directly relevant to the position will lead to the withdrawal of the offer of employment.
All information provided will be treated in the strictest confidence. It will be seen only by those who are entitled to see it as part of their duties. The council complies fully with the CRB Code of Practice. It has a procedure that covers recruitment of ex offenders and the use, handling and storage of information from the CRB. The procedure ensures that the council meets all legal and moral obligations under the code of practice. It also ensures that the council makes safe recruitment decisions, without discriminating unfairly on the basis of an individual's offending background.
The full version of our recruitment of ex offenders and CRB disclosure procedure is available to download:
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Note: The above document is in Portable Document Format (PDF) and you will need a suitable reader to view it. A reader can be downloaded free from the Adobe website (full instructions for downloading the reader are provided on the site).
The code of practice and further information can be found on the CRB disclosure website.