How do I actually run a DBS check, and what does it cost?

Scotland and Northern Ireland: this page is not about you — DBS checks are the England and Wales system; Scotland uses PVG scheme membership and Northern Ireland uses AccessNI, and both are covered on People — How do PVG and AccessNI checks differ from a DBS check? England and Wales: This page sets out the position in full.

“Free for volunteers” is true of the fee, not of the cost

A DBS check for volunteers is free only in part. GOV.UK says, “Checks are free for volunteers”. That is true of the DBS fee for standard and enhanced checks. It is not true of what a small charity pays.

This step is for the manager or volunteer coordinator running checks in England and Wales. It assumes you have already chosen the right level of check for the role. Scotland and Northern Ireland have different systems: see run the check in Scotland or Northern Ireland.

The reason is the route. GOV.UK sets a threshold for dealing with the DBS directly. An organisation that runs fewer checks a year than that, in GOV.UK’s words, “must use a company known as an ‘umbrella body'”. The threshold is set well above what a small charity runs in a year. So in practice the rule covers you.

Umbrella bodies are commercial, and they charge their own fee, including for checks the DBS does for free.

So the honest cost of a check is two figures, not one:

1. the DBS fee for the level, which is waived for volunteers on standard and enhanced checks
2. the umbrella body’s own admin fee, which is commercial, is set by each umbrella body, and is not published by the DBS

Budget for the second figure even for a team made up entirely of volunteers. Ask each umbrella body for its fee before you choose one.

What the DBS charges

A DBS check is a certificate of criminal record information issued by the Disclosure and Barring Service for England and Wales. It comes at one of four levels. GOV.UK’s own fee table gives these figures for employees:

• Standard check: £21.50
• Enhanced check: £49.50
• Enhanced check with barred lists: £49.50

For volunteers, standard and enhanced checks carry no DBS fee. The basic check’s fee is not waived for volunteers; its amount was not established for this page.

These are the figures published in GOV.UK’s guide, and they move. That page’s own date stamp is older than this year, and the DBS’s dedicated fees publication could not be read when this page was written. Check the current fee on GOV.UK before you budget.

Paying more does not buy speed. GOV.UK, verbatim: “You cannot pay more to get a faster check.”

The order to do things in

1. Put an ex-offenders policy in place first. See the next section — it is triggered by running checks at all.
2. Confirm the level and the basis for the role, from the previous step.
3. Choose an umbrella body, having asked for its fee.
4. Run the application through it.
5. When the certificate arrives, verify it against the role: the right person, the right level and the right type.
6. Record the outcome and decide how long you will keep the information. That is a data protection decision, covered in Write your data protection policy.
7. Ask the applicant to join the Update Service, if they have not already.

Before the first check: a recruitment-of-ex-offenders policy

GOV.UK’s words, verbatim: “If you carry out criminal records checks, you must have a policy on employing ex-offenders and show it to any applicant who asks for it.” The Charity Commission’s safeguarding guidance says the same thing slightly differently: “A charity that uses information from the DBS must also have a policy on the recruitment of ex-offenders.”

The two triggers are not identical. GOV.UK’s is running any check, including a basic one. The Commission’s is using information from the DBS.

On the wider reading, one basic check is enough to bring the policy into play. Have it in place before the first application, not after.

What the policy should contain is its own step: write a recruitment-of-ex-offenders policy.

Accepting a certificate someone already has

A certificate from a previous role can be accepted. But GOV.UK says the organisation “must” check three things:

• that the identity matches
• that the certificate is the right level and type for the role applied for
• if the applicant is on the Update Service, whether anything has changed since it was issued

A certificate in hand looks like a completed check. It is only one if all three are done.

The Update Service is the biggest saving available

The Update Service is the DBS subscription that lets an employer check online whether a certificate is still current. The employer then does not have to pay for a new one. It is the mechanism that makes a certificate portable between roles at the same level. For a charity running repeat checks, it is the largest saving there is.

• Annual fee: £16 a year.
• Volunteers: free.
• Deadline: Must register for the Update Service within 30 days of the certificate being issued.

Joining is not a legal requirement. The certificate stays valid without it. But you should ask every applicant to join when the certificate is issued, because the deadline runs from the day the certificate is issued.

No expiry date belongs on the file

GOV.UK, verbatim: “A DBS check has no official expiry date. Any information included will be accurate at the time the check was carried out. It’s up to you to decide when a new check is needed.”

So do not write an expiry date on your records. If the board sets a re-check interval, record it as the charity’s own policy, with the date the board decided it.

Checks on trustees themselves sit alongside a separate eligibility test, covered on check trustee eligibility. With the check run, the next step is the policy the first check requires: a recruitment-of-ex-offenders policy.

Common mistake: budgeting volunteer checks as free

“Checks are free for volunteers” is true of the DBS fee and is what gets quoted. But an organisation running fewer checks than GOV.UK’s direct-registration threshold “must use a company known as an ‘umbrella body'”, and umbrella bodies charge. The honest number is the DBS fee plus an unquantified commercial fee, even for free volunteer checks.

Common mistake: accepting a certificate from a previous role without the portability checks

A certificate in hand looks like a completed check. GOV.UK says the organisation “must” check:

• that the identity matches
• that the certificate is the right level and type for the role
• if the applicant is on the Update Service, whether anything has changed

Common mistake: running checks without a recruitment-of-ex-offenders policy in place

The policy is thought of as something for large employers. GOV.UK: “If you carry out criminal records checks, you must have a policy on employing ex-offenders and show it to any applicant who asks for it.” On GOV.UK’s wording, running checks at all creates the need, and one basic check is enough.

Worked example

Tollgate Youth CIO needs an enhanced check with the children’s barred list for its youth worker. It has never run a check before.

Tollgate runs far fewer checks a year than GOV.UK’s direct-registration threshold, so it has to use an umbrella body. The cost is the DBS fee for the level plus the umbrella body’s own fee. Tollgate asks three umbrella bodies for their fees before choosing, because the DBS does not publish them.

Before the application goes in, the trustees adopt a recruitment-of-ex-offenders policy. When the certificate arrives, the manager checks the name, the level and the type against the role, and records it in the charity’s DBS log.

The trustees decide how long to keep the record under their data protection policy. The youth worker joins the Update Service within the deadline. Nothing on the file says “expires”.