The ISA-registration stage of the Vetting and Barring Scheme for people working and volunteering with children and vulnerable adults in England, Wales and Northern Ireland has been halted.

A review of the Scheme will be undertaken with the aim of cutting it back to be more proportionate and less burdensome.

The first phase of ISA-registration was due to begin on 26 July 2010. This has now been stopped. However, existing arrangements introduced in October 2009 will continue.

This includes:

• any person who is barred from working with children or vulnerable adults will be breaking the law if they work or volunteer, or try to work or volunteer with those groups;
• an organisation which knowingly employs someone or allows someone to volunteer who is barred to work with those groups will also be breaking the law;
• existing requirements concerning Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks will remain in place, and those entitled to such checks can continue to apply for them; and
• if your organisation works with children or vulnerable adults and you dismiss a member of staff or a volunteer because they have harmed a child or vulnerable adult, or you would have done so if they had not left, you are still legally obliged to refer information to the ISA.

The CRB recently provided Registered Bodies with an initial stock of new (purple) application forms in readiness for the planned launch of the ISA-registration phase in July. To reduce the inconvenience on Registered Bodies the CRB will still launch the new application form on 26 July as originally planned.

In order to process applications, the CRB will extract and ignore those parts of the new application form which capture ISA registration requirements, and use only those data fields which are required to process a CRB check.

More information can be found at:
• ISA website http://www.isa-gov.org.uk/

• CRB website http://www.crb.homeoffice.gov.uk/

Source:Volunteering England, 18th June 2010