Clearance forms & Police checks

Whilst there is no mandatory requirement to apply for standard or enhanced disclosure for a person wishing to be Father Christmas, if the recruiter feels that they would prefer to carry out such checks, then they will be eligible to apply.

If the Father Christmas is within a school then it is very likely that a check will be carried out by the local education authority.

Please see SQ87 for more details on this kind of check.

Disclosure Scotland provides this service in Scotland.

There are three levels of check available:

Basic Disclosure: This is the lowest level check containing details of any unspent convictions.

Standard disclosure: Available to those working with children and vulnerable adults shows current and spent convictions, caution, warnings and reprimands held on Police National Computer (PNC).

Enhanced disclosure: The highest level of check for those responsible, caring for, training or supervising children or vulnerable adults contains the same as above but also includes relevant and proportionate information held by local police forces.

See the website in Related Information for more details. The cost of each of the above is £25.

If you want a check for emigration or visa purposes then please see SQ542.

If you paid the fine without challenging it then this would not be classed as a conviction. It is also not classed as a caution or reprimand. If you refused to pay the fine or challenged the Fixed Penalty Notice and, as a consequence of refusing to pay / challenging it, had to attend court and were found guilty, this would be classed as a conviction.

An individual is entitled to exercise their rights to obtain information that is held about themselves under Data Protection legislation. This process is known as a subject access request. This is not a Disclosure Certificate.

A subject access request is an individual's right of access to verify the information held about them on police computers. A subject access request, to the Police National Computer, for instance, will either provide a letter stating that there is currently no information that the Chief Constable is obliged to disclose, or it will provide a list of all information held on the computer, including all convictions regardless of whether they are spent or not, and fixed penalty notices for disorder.

By law, subject access checks have to be done within 1 month of the request being received. There is no charge for this service. Although the police will consider every request, they are under no obligation to provide all of the data and there are exceptions to providing data e.g. if it is likely to jeopardise an investigation. A Subject Access Form is available to download from any Police website or from any police office. You should apply to the force area where you currently live or last lived in the UK. In order to complete the form, you need to provide two forms of identification, one with your name (a passport or driving licence) and the other with your current address (a recent utility bill or bank statement) and a cheque or postal order for the appropriate sum.

Subject access is not an appropriate process when going for a job or college course, this should be done through Disclosure Scotland, see SQ624.

In fact, if an employer insists you do a subject access check and show him/her the results, before giving you a job, s/he commits an offence under Data Protection legislation.

A spent conviction is a conviction, which under the terms of Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 can be effectively ignored after a specified amount of time. The amount of time for rehabilitation depends on the sentence imposed, not on the offence. This act aims to rehabilitate offenders by not making their past mistakes affect the rest of their lives if they have been on the right side of the law for some time. This means that a person who has spent convictions does not have to disclose the conviction to prospective employers, and employers cannot refuse to employ someone on the basis of spent convictions.

You have to tell employers about all your convictions if you want to work with children or vulnerable adults or if you are applying for certain professions such as law, health care, pharmacy, senior management posts within certain sectors, and employment where matters of national security are involved.

If you have received a prison sentence of more than four years your convictions will never become spent.

The more serious the conviction the longer the period of rehabilitation.

If you were 17 or under when found guilty the rehabilitation period is usually half the time it would be if you were 18 or over. For example if the sentence imposed was a community service order then for the younger person the period is two and a half years whilst for the person 18 or over it is five years.