The Act Commentary on Sections Part 5: Safeguarding vulnerable groups, criminal records etc. Section 83: Up-dating certificates
342.This section inserts new section 116A into the 1997 Act. One of the main features of the current CRB system is that a criminal record certificate or an enhanced criminal record certificate is a snapshot in time showing only what conviction and other relevant information was recorded on police and law enforcement databases as of the date a certificate was issued. This means that the reliance an employer can place on the information contained in a certificate diminishes with the lapse of time following the issue of a certificate, which impedes the ‘portability’ of a certificate between roles (that is, the ability of an employee or volunteer to present a certificate obtained for one job or voluntary position to a second employer or voluntary organisation).
343.New section 116A of the 1997 Act introduces a procedure for updating certificates on a continuous basis. An applicant for a criminal conviction certificate, criminal record certificate or enhanced criminal record certificate may subscribe to the updating arrangements at the time an application for a certificate is submitted and thereafter re-subscribe to those arrangements on an annual basis. The update arrangements will only be put in place in respect of an applicant for a certificate and thereafter renewed on payment of an initial fee and subsequently of an annual fee to be prescribed by regulations made under new section 116A(4) and (5) (by virtue of section 125 of the 1997 Act such regulations are subject to the negative resolution procedure). The annual fee will be set at a level necessary to recover the costs of the service and will be offset by the removal of the need to make repeat applications for a criminal record certificate. Under the update arrangements the CRB will not, as such, provide any new conviction or other relevant information to the subscriber to the updating arrangements. Instead, by virtue of the definition of ‘up-date information’ in new section 116A(8), in response to a request for update information, the CRB will advise the person making the request (which can be the applicant, or any person authorised by the applicant who is entitled to see that information) either that there is no new information that would be included on a new certificate or that a new certificate should be applied for (which would imply that a new certificate would contain new information).