From 29 May 2013, the DBS will be removing certain specified old and minor offences from criminal record certificates issued from this date. Changes to the legislation were introduced today (29 May 2013) to allow us to do this.

The filtering rules, together with the list of offences that will never be filtered, are available from www.gov.uk/dbs.

In line with these changes we have amended Question e55 on our application for a criminal record check. To ensure the law is followed correctly, we need Registered Bodies to bring the following change to the applicants attention when completing the form:

Question e55 asks the applicant:

‘have you ever been convicted of a criminal offence or received a caution, reprimand or warning?’

Applicants should now ignore this question and instead treat this question as if they were being asked:

‘do you have any unspent convictions, cautions, reprimands or warnings?’

Thank you for working with us to implement this change.

If you have any inquiries, feedback or suggestions please email customerservices@dbs.gsi.gov.uk