A Decade of Checks: 10 Years of the Disclosure and Barring Service

The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) are so integral to contemporary safeguarding, it’s hard to believe they’ve only been around for ten years.

Today, the 1st of December 2022 marks a decade since their inception.

A building next to a river/canal

In honour of their milestone, we’ve put this article together looking at the history and other milestones from the last ten years of the DBS.

What came before?

If you’ve only recently started dealing with DBS Checks, you might be wondering how criminal record checks were conducted before 2012.

Prior to the DBS, there were two separate organisations: one responsible for conducting criminal record checks, and the other responsible for checking and maintaining the Barred Lists. These organisations were the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) and the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA).

The CRB was formed in 2002 to allow organisations to run criminal record checks. The Police were originally considered to manage this function but lacked the resources to do so effectively. This led to the CRB being set up separately as a non-departmental government body.

The concept of the ISA was recommended by the Bichard Inquiry in 2004, following the murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham in 2002. Despite this, the ISA wasn’t introduced until 2007 by the Labour Government under Gordon Brown.

On the 1st December 2012, the CRB and ISA were merged to form the new Disclosure and Barring Service.

A Timeline of Milestones

In the first four months of the DBS’ life, they conducted over 1.2 million criminal record and barring checks. In the decade that followed they went on to conduct more than 52 million Basic, Standard and Enhanced DBS Checks for UK organisations.

Eric Robinson, Chief Executive of the Disclosure and Barring Service, said:

“I am immensely proud of the legacy and accomplishments DBS has achieved over the course of 10 years, faithfully serving the public in providing the highest quality safeguarding service that robustly protects vulnerable groups, including children.

“As we reach our anniversary, I would like to thank our staff for their contributions to making recruitment safer nationwide. We look forward to maintaining and building upon those high standards, providing safeguarding excellence, and achieving new milestones and legacies.”

You can see a full list of all the milestones below:

  • June 2013 – DBS Update Service launched

  • October 2017 – Quality Assurance Framework launched

  • December 2017 – Basic DBS checks launched

  • 2018 – Nationwide DBS roadshows, showcasing safeguarding services

  • January 2018 – DBS Basic Digital Service goes live on GOV.UK

  • December 2018 – Dr Gillian Fairfield appointed as DBS Chairman

  • February 2019 – First annual Quality Account published

  • April 2019 – Welsh application route for Basic DBS checks goes live

  • July 2019 – Eric Robinson appointed as DBS Chief Executive

  • 2020 & 2021 – DBS contributed to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) hearings

  • March 2020 – First DBS Conference takes place

  • March 2020 – Free-of-charge fast-track COVID-19 checks introduced

  • April 2020 – DBS 2020-25 strategy launched

  • November 2020 – New filtering rules go live for Standard, Enhanced, and Enhanced with Barred List(s) DBS checks, to ensure only certain convictions are shown

  • February 2021 – Regional Outreach service is launched to support external partners and organisations

  • November 2021 – Safeguarding and Quality charter launched

  • April 2022 – Fees for DBS checks are reduced further to benefit customers

  • December 2022 – Celebrating ten years of DBS

Personnel Checks was founded in 2004 and have worked alongside the CRB, ISA, and DBS. It’s incredible how much the world of safeguarding has changed over the past 20 years. We sincerely hope that the progression we have seen over the years continues for the better.

Congratulations to everyone at the DBS on such a big milestone. Here’s to the next ten!

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