‘Street pastors’ in Shropshire patrol the streets at night, and help revelers who have lost their bearings (or their feet) make their way home. The qualifications required for such good Samaritans are as follows: you must be a church member; you must want to spend their Saturday night propping up drunk people and listening to their ramblings. Also – in a sign of the suspicious spirit that reigns in religious institutions – you must ‘have a complete CRB check and be able to commit to a full training programme’. The reason for this requirement is that that drunk people (along with homeless…

Councils are up in arms over government plans to cut CRB checks for taxi drivers. The government plans to only request taxi drivers to get ‘standard’ CRBs (which checks for cautions, convictions, or reprimands), rather than ‘enhanced’ CRBs (which includes all other information on local police records, and child protection registers). Yet it is strange that ‘enhanced’ CRBs as seen as a guarantee of safety. The point about notes on police local computers is that they are unproven – they could be hearsay, or malicious allegations. So such notes are just as likely to incriminate an innocent man as they are to…

A CRB answer to an FOI request provides a fascinating cost breakdown of CRB checks: ‘The CRB as an executive agency of the Home Office is completely self funded and does not receive any government subsidy towards the cost of the Disclosure process. In the event that an employer is required to register their child care services with Ofsted, the payment of Disclosure applications is a matter for the individual or organisation. The CRB does not dictate which party should incur the Disclosure cost. The current cost of a CRB Disclosure to a paid staff member (i.e. not a volunteer) is: £26…

A Tory MP has tabled a private members’ bill to try to get around volunteers being put off by CRB checks. Rather than ask for CRBs, proposes Chris Chope, people should be asked to sign a ‘fit and proper person’ certificate declaring that they have no criminal record and no convictions. The aim is admirable – to cut bureaucracy and enable people to vouch for themselves and their own trustworthiness. A few holes in the plan, though. First, obviously, is that lots of people have some kind of criminal record which in no way makes them a risk to children – for…

The ‘Grandparent project’ is Oxford seeks to involve grandparents in community activities. The project celebrates the virtues of ‘living in a friendly community’, and aims to ‘give a voice to grandparents’. Grandmother Paula Mitty said: ‘I think it would be wonderful for grandparents to be acknowledged for the important part they play in their grandchildren’s lives, especially those grandparents who are carers too.’ Yet these worthy aims are undercut by the details of the ad: ‘All volunteers have to attend our in house training and have a CRB check before they join the volunteer team.’ The weblink for the project is worldclasscommunities.co.uk…

A headteacher has been suspended after a series of wanton acts: he brought himself a meal at the Savoy on the school credit card; he bought himself a piano under the school’s instrument purchasing scheme; and used school money to buy a member of staff’s leaving present. But his worst indiscretion – and the main focus of his grilling – was that he failed to get a CRB check done on a classroom assistant, who had been in the post for ‘who had been in post for several months at least’. What a crime! Here we see how the failure to CRB…

A school in Leicester banned a father from watching his son’s egg and spoon because he didn’t have a CRB check – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leicester/10558648.stm An extreme case, perhaps, but not alone – we’ve had reports of demands for CRB checks for parents going on the rugby bus, or attending the school disco as helpers. In many cases these regulations are coming from Ofsted and other bodies. We need to expose the general climate, and official regulations, that lead to schools acting in this way, rather than to blame particular headteachers.

In our volunteering report we documented the harmful effect of vetting on volunteering. There is also a large nearly-voluntary sector – where people work with children for very little money, and yet because on paper they are ’employed’ would have to finance their own CRBs. I remember my piano teacher charged £2.50 an hour – a token amount really. This email comes from a trampoline coach who falls into this category – she calculated that it would take her 6 weeks to pay back the costs of CRB checks and other fees. We have already reported on the case of Peter Bulmer,…

The Society of Authors just sent us this statement in support of our vetting campaign: ‘The Society of Authors supports the Manifesto Club’s campaign against the over-cautious and over-complicated procedures for vetting and barring of those working with young people. The current CRB system is clearly unworkable, with many of our members who work on a regular part time or voluntary basis with young or vulnerable people reporting the need to obtain multiple clearances for each site they visit or each group with whom they have contact. Despite statements from the Department for Education that CRB checks should not apply to authors,…

I just received this excellent document from James Underwood, Vice President NASUWT Cambridge Branch, listing his concerns with the ISA’s decision making process – including the fact that the ISA does not have to prove that an event took place in order to bar somebody, and that somebody could be barred for the actions of their friends or associates. The full document is here…