Public sector recruiters are the big winners following the government’s review of the Vetting and Barring scheme, according to Tom Hadley from the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC).

In its review of the Vetting and Barring scheme, the government has committed to scale back the system to “common sense levels”, while reforms include merging the criminal records body and independent safeguarding body into a single checking service.

Hadley, the REC’s director of policy and professional services, told Recruiter: “Any recruiters supplying to the public sector are the winners here. There is an issue with public sector agencies working at much tighter margins. Anything that can save you time and money is very important right now; it does act as a boost when things are very streamlined.

“Temporary workers who may work for five or six different agencies, which is not uncommon in the healthcare sector, [at the moment] they have to go through the whole rigmarole of getting a new CRB check each time. [These reforms] will prevent that happening.

“It has got better but you still have situations where an individual has to wait weeks, sometimes months, to get a CRB check.

“I think it will set a tone where it heightens the type of a job that need the checks. If you speak to recruiters, they say it’s getting daft here — there are a lot of people that don’t really have any contact with vulnerable people or children but I’m still being asked to get a CRB check for them.

“The example we have been given is dustmen, where schools have been asked to get enhanced CRB checks. The focus for many years was cutting any risk, however minute. Today’s announcement gives balance in making things more workable and giving a common sense approach.

“We will need to plough through the detail but some of the roles where there is an indirect contact with children will no longer be covered. We were seeing a lot of demand for checks on admin workers who could gain access to files and that kind of things. Those people in back office roles are often called upon to have CRB checks.”