What Are Disclosures?
Disclosures are the documents issued by the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) and Disclosure Scotland (SCRO*).
These Government bodies were established to give organisations offering eligible roles a single access point to the records held by the Police, Department of Health (non-medical) and Department of Education & Skills for the purposes of verifying a prospective or existing employee's response to the question "Do you have a criminal record?"
The legislation giving access to these records was passed in 1999 and these bodies began operations in the Spring of 2002.
In January 2009 the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) became operational and took over responsibility for creating a list of people barred from working with children and another for people barred from working with vulnerable adults. Anybody on the Department of Health list, Department of Education list or on the Sex Offenders register would be included in the ISA barred lists; but the ISA also have a process for assessing people about whom they have received reports from other official sources such as employers, social services, the police, Care Quality Commission etc. This process could also result in people being added to the barred list(s) even though they may not have any convictions.
N.B. Disclosures are different to "Police Checks", which are documents issued by the police at the request of an individual asking for a copy of any data stored on the Police National Computer about them. This information is provided under the Data Protection Act and is therefore only for the personal use of the subject and nobody else has the legal right to ask to see it. Police Checks are also known as "Subject Access" reports.
* Scottish Criminal Records Office