The Home Office has announced that old and minor convictions and cautions will no longer appear on criminal record checks.
The proposed revisions would be a stark change to the current system, which discloses all convictions and cautions to prospective employers, no matter how old or minor they are. If the new legislation is introduced, adult cautions will be filtered from records after six years, whilst those on a young offender’s record will be removed after just two years.
The planned changes follow a Court of Appeal ruling earlier this year which found that blanket checks did not comply with human rights laws.
A spokesperson for the Home Office confirmed that all serious violent and sexual offences would still be disclosed on the criminal record checks, but that all convictions which resulted in a non-custodial sentence would be removed after 11 years for adults and five-and-a-half years for young offenders.
The changes will affect those who are applying for positions which that require a check by the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS), such as care-home workers, doctors, nurses and teachers. More than four million people applied for a criminal records check between 2011 and 2012.
A Home Office spokesperson told HR magazine: “It’s important employers do not just rely on checks by the DBS to make recruitment decisions. They have a professional duty to ensure that staff are properly managed and supervised and that, if they have concerns, information is referred to both the police and DBS.”
Minister for criminal information, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, said that the protection of both children and vulnerable groups was of “paramount importance” to the Government.
“Criminal records checks are an important tool for employers to use in making informed safeguarding decisions. This new system of checks strikes a balance between ensuring that children and vulnerable groups are protected and avoiding intrusion into people’s lives,” he said.
The new legislation is expected to be rolled out over the coming weeks, following Parliamentary scrutiny.