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 Service operates, but instead it will apply to checks issued by Disclosure Scotland.
An example that Disclosure Scotland provides on it’s website is below:
If a person is convicted of theft and is sentenced to 6 months in custody – once the conviction is spent under the terms of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, this will be disclosed for a further 15 years after which it will become a protected conviction and is then no longer disclosed.
Disclosure Scotland have issued guidance on their website about how the process works. For advice, contact Disclosure Scotland.
How is this relevant to us?
We regularly get contacted by people who live in Scotland. Our information & advice on this site covers England & Wales only, so this post is for information only, as well as providing a link to the guidance on the Disclosure Scotland website.
The process that the Scottish Government has introduced differs to the DBS process.
- In some ways, it’s better – for example, it appears to cover more than one conviction.
- In other ways, it seems worse – for example, it takes much longer for a conviction as a adult to become filtered – 15 years.
As part our policy work, we’ll be looking at how the Scottish process works as part of our work in pushing for the DBS filtering system in England & Wales to go further.
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