VETTING AND BARRING SCHEME REGISTRATION HALTED

The Government has announced their intention to remodel the Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS) back to “proportionate, common sense levels”. As a result, the ISA registration phase of the scheme has now been stopped and therefore will not launch on 26 July 2010.
Existing arrangements under the Scheme which will continue include the following:

• since January 2009, the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) has been making independent barring decisions. It will continue to maintain two constantly updated lists, one for those barred from working with children, the other for those barred from working with vulnerable adults;
• existing requirements concerning Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) and Access Northern Ireland checks will remain in place, and those entitled to such checks can continue to apply for them; and
• employers are still legally obliged to refer information to the ISA if they have moved or removed an individual because they have harmed or there is a risk of harm to a member of a vulnerable group.

The scope of the remodelling process – to be co-ordinated by the Home Office in partnership with Department of Health and Department for Education – is currently being finalised; CCPAS will let you know as and when the Government announces a time frame.

New forms must now be used.

Although this phase of the VBS has now been halted, the CRB still launched the new application form on 26 July 2010 as originally planned. In order to process CRB disclosure applications, the CRB will extract and ignore those parts of the new application form which capture ISA registration requirements, and use only those data fields which are required to process a CRB check.

The latest version of the Recruiters Guide is now available and has been emailed to all Recruiters (it is also available in the members area of our website in the ‘Recruiters Information’ section).  

We will continue to keep this page up to date, and be in regular contact with our members.