As if the ongoing palaver with youngest son's DBS certificate wasn't enough, we now have a right old cock-up with the oldest too! He got a sparkling new DBS in April after a tortured tale where the school he worked at filled in the form incorrectly to start with, having corrected it they then submitted another form. That took from last November.Having been made redundant in February he has been applying for jobs, mostly through agencies, fine all well and good until last week. He signed with an agency who of course asked for all the normal stuff plus the new DBS, great er - no! The agency called to tell him the DBS was wrong! And when we checked they were right - DBS for some reason had left off one of his forenames, so we checked his old certificate (from 2011) and sure enough that was the same! Having 'phoned the DBS service they just said well you'll just have to cough up for a new one - £56. The thing is that these people are supposed to check all your information, as do the police and they have therefore issued a certificate to all intents and purposes, to someone who doesn't exist! When my son called DBS back to advise the previous certificate was also incorrect they were a bit taken aback, as well they might be, so they climbed down off their high horse and agreed to raise a query and said they would write to him. So it would seem either the person who filled in the original form got it wrong or the DBS/police don't actually check every application properly. I really don't think that it is fair to expect my son to have to pay for something that was not his fault, it seems to be an 'official error'. But once again it does show up the farce of this unwieldy, expensive waste of time, who would be safeguarded if this is an example of their 'checking'?
Vanessa Smith ● 3869d