People waiting for more than four years to be vetted by Criminal Records Bureau

People are waiting for more than four years to be cleared by the Government agency which vets people before they work with children or vulnerable adults.
By Christopher Hope, Whitehall Editor
Published: 8:00AM GMT 26 Dec 2009

The delays have forced some people to go on the dole to claim unemployment benefit while they wait to be vetted.

The Criminal Records Bureau was established by the Home Office in March 2002 to check if people who want to work with children or vulnerable adults have criminal convictions, cautions or reprimands in England and Wales.

Employers can request a “standard” check - which picks up only convictions and cautions - or an enhanced check, that examines any other “relevant and proportionate” information held by the police.

Official figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats show the longest time taken to process a standard disclosure by the CRB was 1,512 days or 216 weeks.

The longest time taken to process an enhanced disclosure was 1,680 days or 240 weeks. Both of the checks were completed in 2007/08.

This year - 2009/10 - the longest wait has been 393 days for a standard disclosure and 1,434 for an enhanced check. The figures also show that 10 per cent of all disclosures are taking longer than eight weeks to process.

One supply teacher, who has been teaching since 1977, said he had lost out on £1,300-worth of work and had to claim unemployment benefit while he waited for his CRB clearance.
He told The Daily Telegraph: “I am desperate to work and I can’t work because I have not got this particular piece of paper [the CRB check]. I am well over £1,000 down. I blame the Government - they brought this insane system in.

“I sympathise with the police. Their job is to be out catching criminals. But there is a backlog - the whole thing was never thought through. I will have to go to the bank and take advice. I am very distressed. It is insane.

“The victim is me because I cannot pay my mortgage. This is not about catching paedophiles. It is stopping innocent people from working. It is like having an asylum and the lunatics are running it.”

The news comes as a new body called the Independent Safeguarding Authority prepares to vet nine million people, including volunteers at youth groups and sports teams, who want to work with children and vulnerable people.

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat Shadow home affairs spokesman, said: “Any system that takes over four years to verify whether someone has a criminal record is evidently not working. It is very likely to be costing people jobs.

“Error rates are up, disputes with the CRB are on the rise and basic checks, legislated for twelve years ago, are still not in force. Before ministers start checking everyone from dentists to parents, they should probably get the existing house in order.”
A spokesman for the Criminal Records Bureau said that delays were not necessarily caused by the agency.

She said: "Customer perception of the time taken to complete their CRB check can be affected by the length of time taken by the employer to get the form to the CRB and the accuracy of the completed application form.

“Customers are advised that they can track the progress of their application via the online Tracking Service at www.crb.gov.uk/tracking."

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/poli...-Records-Bureau.html

If you are a Christian or Tory activist then you will probably find your application takes ten times longer.

These checks are not about making kids safe - they are about controlling the population for New Labour's Stasi NWO State.

I hope the TORIES get rid of all checks except a basic criminal record check. This system protects no-one and stops people working.

The truth is that people have always (or at least for a long time before New Labour)needed a criminal background check before they could work full time with children. In 1990 it took my brother a few days to be approved, merely as a matter of routine. Now, with advanced computer technology, things are supposed to be quicker. There is zero excuse for these delays. I have to agree with BR that this is not about protecting children. There is something else going on here.

It is insane and I am neither a politically correct person, nor a respector of stupid laws. When I went out to buy a paper on Boxing Day, an elderly man walking in front of me slipped on the ice and fell on his back. Ignoring the stupid law that says that I can't help a vunerable person unless I waited donkey's years to be cleared by the CRB, I went to him to give immediate assistance and stayed with him until others came to help.

I think no one should apply for one of these checks and should just ignore them. Eventually, the whole idea will be dropped. I agree that the checks are not about making children safe, but in my opinion are about government control of the population. Besides, if I, for instance, had a CRB check and it came back that I had a completely clean sheet, it would only prove that if I ever had done anything wrong, that I hadn't been caught.

I think I've told the story before of how, just after my release, I and several other shoppers in Harrods watched a large man beat the shit out of his (10? year old) daughter and did nothing - and was praised by Probation for it ("if you'd interfered you'd have been sent back inside").

DR2 wrote:
Besides, if I, for instance, had a CRB check and it came back that I had a completely clean sheet, it would only prove that if I ever had done anything wrong, that I hadn't been caught.

Yes. Both police and politicians keep telling us that there are "possibly" hundreds of thousands of child abusers who have not yet been detected. I'm not sure what they base that on, or how introducing CRB checks is going to help protect anyone against them. It's all nonsense.

And I bet if you'd filmed it and given the evidence to the police they'd have sent you back inside for filming a child.

Such is the madness of modern society.