Belinda Newton, director of the HR Dept Exeter, says many employers are waiting

for clear guidance amid the current uncertainty surrounding the system of

vetting staff who work with children or vulnerable adults

BUSINESSES which have workers and volunteers working in environments where there are children or vulnerable adults are still awaiting further news on whether the much maligned Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS) will be scrapped or how far it will be scaled back.

This follows the coalition Government's halting of the registration scheme and Home Secretary Theresa May's decision to order a review of the VBS back in the summer.

The scheme was to be administered by the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA), whose future is still under review following last week's 'bonfire of the quangos'.

The VBS was originally designed to register nearly 11 million volunteers and workers when it was devised by the Labour government, but following an outcry on its scope it was refined to volunteers or workers if they performed duties in a regulated activity.

A regulated activity is where an individual in a paid or voluntary capacity works closely with children or vulnerable adults on a frequent basis. This means there were likely to be nine million people registered under the scheme over a period time. Workers seeking paid or unpaid work in, or moving to another, regulated activity would have been forced to register with the VBS from November 1 this year. Failure to do so would have resulted in a £5,000 fine for the individual if they tried to secure work without registering.

As the registration process has now been halted, businesses are awaiting the outcome of the Home Secretary's review and calls have been made by many commentators, including Civitas, an independent think tank, for the scheme to be scrapped altogether because it is a 'disproportionate interference' that doesn't make children safer. The NSPCC said the coalition Government needed to "strike the right balance between keeping children safe and not deterring adults from volunteering or working with children" when considering its review.

Businesses will need clear guidance on what is going to happen next as the initial proposals for the VBS were fraught with confusing messages about who should actually register and it was causing concern in many volunteering and business sectors.

Naturally checks should always be carried out on individuals working in environments where children and vulnerable adults are being supervised or cared for. Since its introduction in October 2009, the ISA has been administering two important lists barring individual who shouldn't be working within these environments; the ISA Adults' Barred List and the ISA Children's Barred List.

Employers also have a duty to inform the ISA should they dismiss workers or cease using volunteers in regulated activities because they think they have harmed or pose a risk of harm to children or vulnerable adults.

It goes without saying that employers must also not employ, or use a volunteer, who is a barred person on the ISA's lists.

Employers should still ensure they carry out the right checks as even if the VBS is not scrapped, scaled back or even replaced, it was never designed to replace established Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks or legal right to work checks in these environments.

It seems common sense that there should be as rigid checks as possible to protect vulnerable individuals, but businesses will want to ensure they have clear guidance on any scheme and on who they have to check.

Therefore we await the findings of the review with anticipation to see its impact.