Roughly third of East Devon councillors may not have submitted criminal check papers yet

Around a third of East Devon’s councillors are thought not to have started the process of obtaining criminal checks three months after the policy was implemented .

In April the council agreed the members should undergo a basic Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check, which reveals ‘unspent’ convictions and cautions.  Serious crimes are never ‘spent’ and always have to be disclosed, but others can be ignored after a certain amount of time, depending on the legnth of sentence.

But at the council’s scrutiny committee this week, Councillor John Loudoun (Independent, Sidmouth Rural) said he believed around a third of the authority’s 60 councillors had “yet to commence the process of obtaining a DBS check.

“This is in spite of us having got to the point where we are three months into the expectation that members should do it,” he said.

“There may be good reasons why some people have been unable to do it, such as being unwell, but it is getting to a point where this council is going to have to draw a line under the process and say ‘you have not completed the process that the council said in April was mandatory’ and that potentially can lead to a standards referral.

“We don’t want to see that, so this is a plea for those who have yet to do it, for whatever reason, to start the process with the utmost speed.”

While it is not the law for district councillors to obtain DBS checks, and they must consent to it, because the requirement is now in the council’s constitution, failure to comply could amount to a breach of the code of conduct.

However, some councillors reported problems with their applications, including being unable to find a code that they were due to be sent.

Others who had completed the process wanted to know whether East Devon had been informed yet and when the council would update their individual profile pages.

And Cllr Peter Faithfull (Independent, Ottery St Mary) said while he supported the principle of councillors obtaining a DBS check, he too had hit upon an issue.

“I may be the only councillor with this problem, but I do not presently have any of the first classification of documents that are required, as I do not have an up-to-date passport, and so cannot undertake a DBS check,” he said.

He said he had consulted the authority’s monitoring officer about the issue, but that he had not heard back yet.

Cllr Joe Whibley said it was too early to worry about councillors not completing the process, as there were more sessions aimed at providing help and they were still in the timeframe set by the council.

“I’m one of the people who hasn’t yet started the process, as we have a series of document verification sessions that we set right at the start of this process, and one of them is next week,” he said.

“And so I think in terms of worrying about people not starting the process, I think after next week is an appropriate time to start worrying.”

The decision to seek basic DBS checks follows a national review last year by former Norfolk chief constable Simon Bailey.

Mr Bailey recommended that all unitary and upper tier councils conduct mandatory enhanced criminal checks of councillors who are being considered for appointment to any committee involved in decisions about children’s services or services for vulnerable adults.

While East Devon District Council is not a unitary or upper tier council, and does not carry out social services functions, it acknowledged it had “the ability to invite all members to undergo a basic DBS check.

“Whilst this is not mandatory, by including this protocol in the constitution, it will mean that failure to comply will result in a member being in potential breach of the code of conduct,” a report for councillors stated.