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For people with criminal records
For people with criminal records

Tag: employers

Bad policies and practices by employers

As part of our fair access to employment project, we work with employers to develop fair policies and practices and highlight good practice. We know that employers don’t always follow their own policy, and that sometimes decision making is subjective. We’re gathering evidence of bad practice and challenge this where we can – and we need your help to do this.

We want to hear your experiences of bad practice. In some cases, we will challenge employers directly. In other situations, we press for action to be taken by others including the DBS or the ICO. Where we’ve been successful in achieving changes in practice, we write the example up anonymously and post it on our website for employers to help employers learn where others have gone wrong. Ultimately, we want to see all employers operate fair and inclusive practices towards people with a criminal record.

Bad practice could include:

  • Asking about spent convictions for a job that is covered by the ROA.
  • Blanket policies of not recruiting people with unspent convictions
  • A ban the box employer asking questions on application
  • Carrying out DBS checks for roles not eligible for them
  • Requesting applicants provide a copy of their ‘police record’ (also known as ‘enforced subject access’)
  • Failing to give applicants an opportunity to explain their criminal record
  • Sharing information about criminal records without your consent (for example in references)

Take a look at some of the examples we’ve posted on our website for employers.

What we need from you

If you have experience of bad practice by employers, contact us at policy@unlock.org.uk using the subject header ‘Call for evidence: bad practice’. Please include:

  • Your name
  • Contact details (email and telephone) and how you’d like us to contact you
  • Details of your experience (please include the name of the employer and of any staff you spoke to, include emails/screenshots etc if possible)
  • What you think should change.
  •  Whether you’d be willing to take part in media coverage on this issue in future (this is for our reference only, we won’t share your details with others)

Any information you provide will be kept in line with our confidentiality policy. Any personal information provided to us will not be shared externally without your consent.

Find out more about how we handle your data.

Find out more about our work with employers.

Has an employer wrongly carried out a standard or enhanced DBS check?

As part of our fair access to employment project we’re gathering information on employers who have carried out standard or enhanced checks where only a basic is legally permitted.

For some jobs, employers are allowed to consider cautions and spent convictions (unless they have been filtered). Employers recruiting for these jobs are legally permitted to carry out a higher level DBS check – a standard or enhanced check. Both checks disclose cautions, spent and unspent convictions and enhanced checks may also include additional “soft intelligence” held in police records. It is a criminal offence for an employer to knowingly request a check at a higher level than the law permits.

Find out more about eligibility here.

What we need from you

Has an employer has carried out a standard or enhanced criminal record check for a role that wasn’t eligible?

Have they taken into account spent convictions or other information that they were not entitled to see (so called “soft intelligence” or “local police information”?

If so, please contact us at policy@unlock.org.uk using the subject header ‘Call for evidence: ineligible DBS check’. Please include:

  • The name of the employer (or umbrella body if relevant) that did the check
  • The job title of the role you applied for, and a description of the responsibilities
  • A copy of the job advert (if available)
  • The full details of your criminal record
  • Details of any correspondence with the employer about the check – for example, did they tell you it was necessary for the role you were applying for and, if so, did they say anything else about why?
  • Details of what happened when the disclosure certificate was given to the employer
  • Whether you would be willing to contribute to any media coverage on this issue in future (this is for our reference, we won’t share your details without consent)

Any information you provide will be kept in line with our confidentiality policy. Any personal information provided to us will not be shared externally without your consent. To help us provide you with the best advice, we may discuss your case, anonymously, with legal practitioners.

Find out more about how we handle your data.

Find out more about what we do with your experiences and evidence.

Unlock complaint leads to ruling that the Disclosure and Barring Service breached the Data Protection Act

We’re pleased to report that the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) has today issued a press release which sets out their ruling that the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) has breached the Data Protection Action after failing to stop collecting information about criminal conviction data that was no longer required because of a filtering regime that was introduced in May 2013.

The DBS hadn’t updated their application forms, and so although the ‘filtering’ process meant that certain cautions and convictions are no longer disclosed on standard and enhanced checks, the DBS were still asking whether applicants had “ever been convicted of a criminal offence or received a caution…” as part of their application form. The result of this was that employers were finding out information which they weren’t entitled to know about.

We made the original complaint to the ICO in September 2013, after our helpline had received a number of calls about this problem. In particular, we highlighted two cases where individuals had disclosed information they no longer needed to disclose, but had subsequently had their offers of employment withdrawn. The two cases are explained in more detail below.

Christopher Stacey, Co-Director at Unlock, said; “We’re pleased to see that the DBS has responded to this issue by updating their application form and improving their guidance to applicants. It is important that people with convictions are able to understand what they do and don’t have to disclose during the recruitment process, and the DBS have an important part to play to make this clear and easy to understand.”

“It remains difficult for people to find out whether a caution or conviction that they have is eligible for filtering, and we would like to see the DBS respond to this issue by introducing a system which allows individuals to obtain a copy of their DBS certificate before they start applying for jobs or volunteer work, so that they can be confident that they’re disclosing the appropriate level of information. We would also like to encourage employers that are entitled to carry out standard and enhanced checks to make sure that they look at their own recruitment processes and make sure that they are only asking about cautions and convictions that would not be filtered by the DBS”.

Brief details of the cases that formed part of our complaint to the ICO

Case One
An individual ticked ‘Yes’ to the question because the question hadn’t changed, and they didn’t see the accompanying guidance. To them, it was clear what question they were being asked, and so despite their conviction being one that would be filtered, they ticked ‘Yes’ which meant, because they handed the form back to the employer to submit, they had disclosed they had a conviction to the employer. The employer asked further questions about this, and decided to withdraw the job offer.

Case Two
An individual ticked ‘Yes’ to this question because they were not sure whether their conviction would be filtered. As there was no other means of definitively finding out whether it would be filtered or not, they erred on the side of caution and ticked ‘Yes’, believing that, if it would be filtered, it wouldn’t matter what they put. It turned out that their conviction was due to be filtered, but because they had ticked yes, their employer got to find out when they handed the form back, and subsequently decided to withdraw the job offer.

-END-

Notes to editors

  1. Press/media
  2. More information relating to the filtering process is available here.

Employers should not discriminate against reformed offenders

We’ve contributed to a discussion on BBC Tees about the attitudes of employers towards people with convictions

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