DBS Overhauls Employer Guidance for Criminal Record Update Service
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The News
The government's Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) has updated its Update Service guidance for employers, Personnel Today reported on 25 August. The refreshed guidance clarifies how status checks work, what they show, their limitations, and how to integrate them into safer recruitment practice. The changes follow a Home Office review of the Update Service, and the DBS will run two free online employer masterclasses on 15 September and 15 October to walk employers through the new expectations.
Why It Matters
For TA leaders in regulated sectors — education, healthcare, social care — DBS checks are a routine but high-stakes recruitment control. The Update Service lets employers re-check a candidate's status without a fresh application, but only if the check is correctly interpreted. The new guidance tightens the definition of "appropriate risk-based checking schedule," which means a fixed annual recheck for every role is no longer defensible by default.
Taking Action
All action is situated in your corporate context. These are starting points, not prescriptions — choose what fits.
Connect
Who to talk with in your enterprise
Your head of safer recruitment (or TA operations lead) and your safeguarding lead. Ask safer recruitment whether your recheck schedule is risk-based or simply annual-by-policy. Ask safeguarding whether anyone has audited the gap between a DBS certificate date and the start of the role it covers.
Inspect
What to take a closer look at
Sample 10 recent DBS checks. For each, confirm the status check was run through the Update Service within the guidance's risk window for that role — not just at offer stage. If the answer is "we recheck on the anniversary," you have a compliance gap dressed up as a process.
Reflect
What to think about more deeply
A clean DBS certificate is a photograph, not a video. If your process treats it as the latter, what are you actually checking?