Criminal record checks of Police applicants (FOI)

Request

Could you list the number of crimes flagged on CRB checks on people applying for jobs with the police and what the crimes have been in the past three years.

Response

All the information requested is not held.

The police receive a high number of applications for each post advertised, both uniformed and civilian posts. The last recruitment advert for police officers saw applications reach the hundreds. Police vetting is not completed on each and every applicant so the information requested is not available.

Those who are shortlisted for interview will undergo vetting commensurate with the role applied for. This will include amongst other checks, a criminal records check. The College of Policing ‘Vetting Code of Practice’ is followed to determine if an applicant will be considered suitable for employment following the completed vetting check. Those who do not clear the vetting check, have a right of appeal.

The hard copy information extracted from the Police National Computer (PNC) to facilitate the vetting process, is destroyed after the application process is complete. To further access the PNC to respond to this Freedom of Information request would involve the processing of an individual’s sensitive personal data. This would not be Fair and Lawful processing under the first principle of the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005.

To manually search the Human Resource files for each applicant for any hand written notes on an individual would take in excess of the time permitted by the Freedom of information (Jersey) Law 2011.

The request is refused.

Exemption applied

Article 16 - A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.