What’s your experience of ban the box?

As part of our fair access to employment project, we are gathering evidence of employers’ approaches to people with criminal records. We work with employers to develop fair policies and practices and highlight good practice. Ban the box is a key part of helping people with convictions get back into the workplace, and we have called on government to place it on a statutory footing. We know this is only part of the answer though – employers need to have embedded fair recruitment practices to make ban the box effective.

We’re gathering evidence on how ban the box works in practice.

• Did it encourage you to apply for a job you might not have otherwise?
• Did you feel you were treated fairly?
• Or maybe the employer claimed to support ban the box but had a blanket ban on unspent convictions?
• Maybe it made no difference at all.

Whatever your experience, we want to hear about it.

What we need from you

If you have experience of applying to a ‘ban the box’ employer, contact us at policy@unlock.org.uk using the subject header ‘Call for evidence: ban the box’. 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 would be willing to take part in media coverage on this issue (this is for our reference, 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.