DBS Checks as Part of Your Recruitment Process
As an employer, it’s really important to hire the best people for your business. You need to try to reduce risk for your customers, existing staff, and the business as a whole. One way you can do this, is with a criminal record background check on prospective employees from the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS).
DBS are able to do background checks at different levels. The levels are needed depending on the type of job role that an employee will be doing. There are three levels of check: Basic, Standard and Enhanced.
Basic DBS Check
The Basic DBS Check is the simplest DBS Check that can be conducted. It will look for unspent convictions in a person’s criminal background. Any employer can ask that their prospective employees have a Basic DBS. You may need this type of check for admin jobs, if you wanted to sell scrap metal, or sell alcohol. Some countries ask for a Basic DBS Check in order for visas to be obtained.
As an individual, you are able to request a Basic DBS Check (whereas higher level checks such as Standard, or Enhanced, need to be requested on behalf of an employee from a business or agency). Typically, Basic DBS Checks, tend to take around 10 days to be received (but some may be quicker than this).
Standard DBS Check
A Standard DBS Check will look for spent and unspent criminal convictions, official warnings, reprimands, and cautions. There are many occupations that require a Standard DBS Check, for example, if you work in healthcare, education, finance, legal, dental, or veterinary. This type of check must be applied for by the employer. Typically, standard checks may arrive within a month.
Enhanced DBS Check
An Enhanced DBS Check will look for spent and unspent convictions, warnings, reprimands, cautions and also asks the local police forces connected to an individual’s addresses over the past five years, whether they hold any non-conviction information on the individual, which could be relevant to the job role. Employees doing work in healthcare, personal care, taxi driving or working in the Gambling Commission would need an Enhanced DBS. This is a check that an employer must request on an employees behalf.
Enhanced DBS with Barred Lists
If an employee will be doing regulated activity with children, or vulnerable adults, in education or healthcare, then an Enhanced DBS with Barred Lists would be required. It checks everything that is checked in an Enhanced DBS Check, but also looks at the Barred Lists for children and vulnerable adults, to check that the employees name does not appear on there through being prohibited to work with these groups, due to past violent, abusive, neglectful offences, or sexual offences. Typically, Enhanced DBS Checks with Barred Lists take around a month to receive, but this could be longer, especially if a person has moved a lot over the past five years, because each police force will need to be contacted.
Whilst DBS Checks don’t expire, the information on them, is only accurate for the day they were issued. If a person commits a crime ever after that date, that information would only show up on new DBS Certificates. So, many companies, decide to check their employees every 2-3 years, just to ensure their record is still clear.
