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Following the judgment by the Supreme Court on the current criminal records disclosure regime, we thought it would be useful to highlight the main points of the decision and to set out what is likely to happen next. What does the judgment say? The Supreme Court ruled that two aspects of the filtering regime – […]
Although Unlock as a charity primarily focuses on people with convictions and cautions, a recent case about a rape acquittal is an important one for a lot of people that use our website that have other things on their police record. At the end of July 2018 a case was heard in the Supreme Court […]
Conditional cautions like simple cautions may be filtered from standard and enhanced DBS certificates after 6 years, providing you’ve not been cautioned for a non-filterable offence. However, our helpline has been contacted recently by several people who’ve had conditional cautions which are eligible for filtering disclosed on their enhanced DBS certificate as a conviction. Further […]
For those of you that have been following the work we’ve been doing on challenging the DBS ‘filtering’ process, we’ve heard today that the Court of Appeal has rejected the Government’s appeal to a decision of the High Court in January last year. This ruled that the criminal records disclosure scheme was disproportionate and unlawful. […]
Last week, the Scottish Government announced details of a process that will apply to Standard and Enhanced checks that are issued by Disclosure Scotland. The process started on the 10th September 2015. This process will remove certain convictions and cautions from these types of disclosures.It’s similar to the filtering process that the Disclosure & Barring […]
We’re looking for examples of where ‘filtering’ doesn’t go far enough. Please read an update that we’ve published on our main site as part of our policy work on the DBS filtering process.
Today the Supreme Court ruled on a case that’s been going through the courts for some time. An earlier Court of Appeal case is what led to the ‘filtering process’ being introduced by the Disclosure & Barring Service. The reason for this post is to just make it clear that, as a result of today’s […]
We know how complicated the criminal records process can be. The ‘filtering’ process that came in in May 2013 has been quite a culture shock to many people who were previously told that all cautions and convictions would come back on standard and enhanced checks. At the time, we developed a detailed guide on filtering. […]
Following our complaint to the Information Commissioners Office which recently led to the Disclosure & Barring Service signing an undertaking to update their application form, we have now had it confirmed by the DBS that their application form has now been updated. A copy of this is below. As you can see from the above image, the […]
Since the introduction of filtering in mid-2013, our helpline has been constantly asked “is my conviction or caution eligible for filtering?” In some ways, this has been an easy to identify. When was it? Is it your only conviction? How old were you at the time? However, where things have been tricky is when it […]
Our outdated criminal records regime is holding hundreds of thousands of people back from participating fully in society.
Visit the #FairChecks website where you can write to your local MP, letting them know that a fair criminal records system is important to you.