Vetting and Barring Scheme Announcement
Today, Tuesday 15th June 2010, the Government has announced their intention to remodel the Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS) back to proportionate, commonsense levels. As a result, the ISA-registration stage of the scheme has been stopped and therefore will not launch on 26 July 2010 as planned.
Although the full details and scope of this remodel are still to be finalised:
It is business as usual for the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB);
The elements of the VBS put in place back in October 2009 continue; and
Existing requirements concerning the CRB will remain in place, and those entitled to such checks can continue to apply for them.
As a result of ISA-registration being stopped, the CRB has had to consider the impact on its application process. You will be aware that the CRB has recently provided Registered Bodies with an initial stock of new (purple) application forms in readiness for the planned launch of the ISA-registration phase in July, and although this phase of the VBS has now been halted, the CRB will still launch the new application form on 26 July 2010 as originally planned.
The CRB hopes that by introducing the new form as planned, it will reduce the inconvenience to our customers during this period. In order to process 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.
Further details and key dates about the transition to the new application form can be found here.
The CRB will continue to keep all customers informed of any further developments through its customer newsletter CRB News and provide the latest updates on the CRB website.
To read the full Home Office press release, click here.