DBS filtering rules and removal of historic data

Most cautions and convictions recorded on the Police National Computer are known as protected offences, which means they can be filtered off a DBS certificate once the filtering rules are satisfied. Legislation protecting children and vulnerable adults also sets out a list of specified offences which will never be filtered from a certificate, however long ago they happened.

For anyone under 18 at the time, an offence was filtered if it was at least two years since a caution, or at least five and a half years since a conviction that did not result in a prison sentence including a suspended one, provided it was not a specified offence and there was only one conviction. That last requirement was known as the multi-offence rule.

For anyone 18 or over, the same applied but with longer periods: at least six years since a caution, and at least eleven years since a conviction on the same terms.

The multi-offence rule never applied to youth cautions, reprimands or final warnings, so multiple ones of those could still be filtered. Nor did it apply to adult cautions, so multiple adult cautions could also be filtered, subject to the other rules.

Two things. Youth cautions, reprimands and final warnings are no longer automatically included on a DBS certificate at all. And the multi-offence rule was removed for convictions, so each conviction is now considered for filtering separately rather than a second conviction blocking the lot.

If an old offence is filtered from an enhanced DBS certificate, that does not necessarily mean the information is removed entirely, or that it will never appear elsewhere on the certificate, and this is the part that catches people out. Even where a caution or conviction is eligible for filtering and is removed from the convictions and cautions section, the police may still choose to disclose the same information under Other Relevant Information, using their discretion. Filtering from one section of the certificate does not prevent disclosure in another, although it may be possible to make representations to the police to prevent that information being disclosed.

Yes. Disclosure under Other Relevant Information can be disputed, and the Independent Monitor can review it if the dispute is refused. If that has happened to you, the disputing disclosure and Independent Monitor pages set out those routes.

The rules are complicated, the change in 2020 did not cover every situation, and their application is still subject to a good deal of scrutiny and argument. I can tell you whether a particular caution or conviction should be filtered, and what your options are if it has been disclosed regardless.