School staff records still awaiting clearance

The vetting process began after Ofsted inspectors discovered serious flaws in the way most schools across the country keep even the most basic of records '“ including checks against the sex offenders' register.

It means that many schools across West Sussex cannot prove all their staff have been cleared by the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB), or are not on the government's own blacklist of people barred from working in schools.

Work has been taking place to re-check all staff where evidence clearing them to work with children has either been lost or never recorded, costing taxpayers thousands of pounds.

All re-checks should have been completed by the end of last month (March), but the county council has confirmed that around 160 members of staff have yet to be cleared.

Each repeated CRB check has costs 36. Spokeswoman for West Sussex County Council Philippa Eld said: 'The number of CRB re-checks which are still required is approximately 160 and is being cleared as quickly as possible.

These checks will cost just under 6,000.

'The waiting time for the relevant information to come back from the CRB has recently reduced from three months to approximately a month.

'The county council takes its role in safeguarding children very seriously and has just introduced a new single database system and support staff at a cost of around 500,000 to make sure our records are up to date and reliable.'