CRB checks, bureacracy and regeneration

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I have to have another CRB check done. This is so I can sit in a committee room at Bradford City Hall and hear appeals against the Council’s refusal of support for travelling to school. Apparently, Councillors who sit on committees that “discharge any education or social services function” require a CRB check. Here in Bradford the Council’s bureaucracy has decided that this will be an ‘enhanced’ check.

I have no idea at all what all this is for, whether is achieves anything other than feed a system. I have no problem with running background checks on people who are working with children but I’m not doing that, I’m just sitting on a committee and won’t come into contact with any children who aren’t firmly attached (so to speak) to parents, guardians or other responsible adults. And that contact – if we can credit it with such a description – takes place in the company of other panel members, committee clerks, officers of the education authority and other assorted educational flotsam and jetsam. There is precisely zero risk associated with such a circumstance.

I am inclined not to complete the necessary forms and to see what happens – the worst outcome is that they take me off the Education Appeals Panel, which wouldn’t be a great loss on my part! However, the whole exercise does remind me of a lecture given by someone involved in regenerating (of trying to regenerate) Wythenshawe in South Manchester. Given Wythenshawe’s location close to the North West’s biggest employment generator – Manchester Airport – very few residents of the town actually secured work there. On investigation, it turned out that the main reason for this was that records of petty criminality or anti-social behaviour meant most of them failed security checks. As we were told – going straight doesn’t look a great option to these young men!

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CRB checks: some perspective please!

Yesterday evening was spent with my brother and his wife, Kaye in Weston-super-mare. Kaye is a police officer specialising in child protection issues and always reminds me that not everybody out there is a good guy! And she has done a great deal more work in trying to improve the way in which child protection issues are handled by the police - at least in Avon & Somerset.


So today's media huff about "ordinary parents" having to complete CRB checks to ferry kids to football matches proved an interesting discussion. And between the Children's Minister, Baroness Morgan saying everything is fine and the shadow minister, Chris Grayling suggesting we're going to far, there's some room for common sense.

Of course we should run checks on those people who work with children, young people and vulnerable adults. To do otherwise when we are able to check is a neglect of the duty we place on Government. And that must include volunteers.

However, the current system is inefficient, expensive and duplicating of effort. To give just one example - it is ridiculous that I have to have a CRB check for each of the following:

1. Chairing education transport appeals
2. As a school governor
3. As a manager of a youth cricket team
4. As an employee of a charity providing youth services and delivering youth work

One portable CRB - renewed every two years - should be enough. And bear in mind that, a £50 or so a go, CRB checks are a real cost for many small youth organisations, sports clubs and local community groups. So let's get some sense into this debate, let's reduce the cost of the process and try to recognise that the overall risks remain very small.