SEND School Transport Firm Lose Contract Down to Non-compliant DBS Checks

A large transport firm supplying special educational needs and disability (SEND) transport services to councils in the West Midlands have been found to have non-compliant DBS records. An audit discovered the concerns after complaints about how Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council issued contracts to its suppliers.  

North Birmingham Travel was set to take on a contract worth £20 million from Sandwell MBC over 4-years. Following concerns raised about their DBS Checks they were deemed unsuitable for this contract. On top of this, they have now lost a major contract with Birmingham City Council as well.  
 

Regulated Activity and DBS Compliance   

All the drivers working on the SEND transport contracts would have been involved in ‘regulated activity’. Regulated activity is work that a barred person must not do. In other words, it’s the type of work where certain individuals may pose a threat to those they are working with. Working regularly with children is always classed as regulated activity. 

DBS Checks are always needed when individuals are going to be working in regulated activity.  DBS Checks need to be up to date to ensure employers have relevant criminal record information on staff. This information means they can make safe recruitment decisions by preventing inappropriate individuals working in regulated activity.  

Without this information, employers are unable to confirm whether or not their employees are compliant with statutory rules. The council investigation found that 59 out of 110 employees did not have a compliant DBS Check on file. The main issues were, individuals with convictions on their DBS Check had not been reported to the council. DBS Checks has also been carried over from previous employers.  
 

Working with convictions  

During the council's investigation it highlighted the fact that on the company’s DBS records, 16 individuals had ‘positive disclosures’. This means that their DBS Checks contained some kind of conviction information.   

Having prior convictions isn’t necessarily a problem when working within regulated activity. Many people work in regulated activity with a criminal record with no issue. It is only a problem if what is disclosed on a check has a relation to the activity an individual is carrying out.  

It isn’t clear whether any of the drivers with positive disclosures were barred from working with children. However, it wasn’t the information disclosed on the DBS Certificates that had caused the problem. North Birmingham Travel had not followed the council’s process for handling employees with disclosed information.  

Where drivers have a positive disclosure on their DBS Certificate, they must apply to the council’s DBS Panel, so they can demonstrate their suitability. The panel would then assess the individual in question and supply a form to confirm whether or not they were considered suitable for the role. This process had not been completed for 15 of the drivers with disclosure information, for the driver it had been completed for, the form issued by the council had been tampered with.  

DBS Checks from Previous Employers  

This was the second source of non-compliance reported in the council's investigation. They discovered that a number of the DBS Checks on North Birmingham Travel’s records had been issued under the name of staff members previous employer. Because DBS Checks are often seen as a hurdle to recruiting a staff member this is quite a common problem. We regularly come across employers that accept DBS Checks issued in the name of a previous employer.  

While it may seem like a non-issue, it could be incredibly problematic. When a DBS Certificate is issued, the information provided is correct up until the issue date. If you accept a DBS Certificate from someone’s previous place of employment, you have no idea whether or not they have committed an offence in the elapsed time period.  

This is why it’s always essential to carry out a new DBS Check on any newly recruited staff member. On top of this, in sectors where DBS Checks are common, it's often a regulatory requirement to have DBS Checks carried out in name of the current employer. If you aren’t sure whether or not you should be carrying out a fresh DBS Check on a new recruit, we’d always carrying one out.  

For more information about how Personnel Checks background screening solutions can aid your organisation, get in touch! You can give us a call on 01254 355688 or drop us an email at letstalk@personnelchecks.co.uk