The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2014

EXPLANATORY NOTE

(This note is not part of the Order)

This Order amends the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (“the 1975 Order”). The 1975 Order disapplies specified provisions of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (c. 53) (“the 1974 Act”) so as to permit questions to be asked about spent convictions and cautions (except where they are protected convictions and cautions as described in article 2A of the 1975 Order) in order to assess a person’s suitability for admission to certain occupations or to hold certain types of employment, licences or permits. It also permits spent convictions and cautions, or a failure to disclose them, to be a ground for excluding a person from those occupations or for making decisions in relation to those types of employment, licences and permits.

The provisions referred to in article 1(3) of this Order are consequential on amendments made to Part 3 of the Childcare Act 2006 (c. 21) by section 84 of, and Schedule 4 to, the Children and Families Act 2014 (c. 6). Those amendments allow for the registration of persons who propose to provide childcare on domestic premises with childminder agencies as an alternative to registration in one of the registers maintained by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills (“the Chief Inspector”). In turn, any person wishing to operate as a childminder agency will be required to register with the Chief Inspector. The amendments made to the 1975 Order will permit the Chief Inspector, in the course of assessing a person’s suitability for registration as a childminder agency, to ask about the spent convictions and cautions of those who will carry on the agency. In the case of a body corporate seeking registration as a childminder agency the Chief Inspector will, for example, be permitted to ask about the spent convictions of the directors and other officers of the company. The amendments will also permit a registered childminder agency to ask any person it proposes to employ to manage the agency or to work for the agency in a capacity which involves entering childminders’ premises (for example to assess the quality of care and education provided in that setting) about their spent convictions and cautions.

Article 4(c) inserts a new provision in article 3(1) of the 1975 Order. This amendment permits a person employed by a local authority in England or Wales, when preparing a report for the court about the suitability of a person to be a special guardian as described in section 14A of the Children Act 1989 (c. 41) to ask about the spent convictions and cautions of that person or a person over the age of 18 living in the same household as the proposed special guardian.

Articles 2 to 7 make various amendments to the 1975 Order so that administrative and auxiliary staff in organisations such as children’s homes, adoption agencies or residential family centres who are neither running the service nor engaged in work that is regulated activity in relation to children, but may still have access to sensitive information or contact with vulnerable children, to be asked about their spent convictions and cautions.

Article 6(b)(i) inserts a new paragraph 9 into Part II of Schedule 1 to the 1975 Order to reflect legislative changes introduced by the Offender Management Act 2007 (c. 21) under which individuals authorised to deliver probation services are described as officers of providers of probation services.

Article 6(c) and (d) make amendments to the 1975 Order to permit the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (“CILEx”) to ask a person concerned with the management of a CILEx authorised person, or to ask a person authorised to conduct a reserved legal activity as defined by Legal Services Act 2007 (c. 29) and who is not a fellow of CILEx, about their spent convictions and cautions.