Criminal record checks on teachers, social care staff and healthcare workers were delayed for months because of inadequate consultation between the Home Office, Capita and users of the new Criminal Records Bureau (CRB), according to a report to parliament last month.

The public spending watchdog the National Audit Office (NAO), which produced the report, criticised the Home Office and its IT partner Capita for making a number of planning errors that led to delays with its new criminal vetting service, the CRB.

One flaw was that the Home Office and Capita wrongly assumed that organisations applying for access to criminal records, such as schools, hospitals and nursing homes, to vet future staff would mainly do so by phone or online. In practice, 80% did so by post.

Consequently, checks due to begin on March 2003 did not take place until October, seven months later. As a result, vast numbers of staff were unable to take up posts.

Checks against the Department of Health’s list of unsuitable people also had to be deferred until June 2004.

Sir John Bourn, controller and auditor general of the NAO, said: “The performance problems suffered by the Criminal Records Bureau caused considerable difficulties for customers. The Bureau’s experiences emphasise the importance of testing key business assumptions and consulting with potential users at an early stage, and of working in partnership with contracts from the start to solve the problem.”