About Disclosure Scotland
Disclosure Scotland provides a valuable service protecting the vulnerable people in our society by helping organisations make safer recruitment decisions when duties involve contact with children or adults at risk.
The Disclosure service was launched on 29 April 2002 and was developed under the guidance of the Scottish Government, following the enactment of Part V of the Police Act 1997. This introduced a system of disclosing criminal history information to individuals and organisations for employment and other purposes.
From October 2007, Disclosure Scotland formed part of a new (shadow) Scottish Government agency which will plan for and then manage and operate the new vetting and barring service as provided for in the Protection of Vulnerable Groups (Scotland) Act 2007.
For commercial and operational purposes, British Telecommunications plc (BT) were selected as a business partner following a Public Private Partnership competitive negotiation process. BT is responsible for various aspects of the service, including:
- call centre facility;
- issuing and receipt of applications;
- verification and authentication of applicants;
- processing of fee payments;
- development and support of Disclosure I.T. systems; and
- printing and issuing of Disclosure certificates
BT staff are not responsible for searching the criminal history systems or for determining which criminal record information is included on the Disclosure certificates.
We provide three levels of criminal history checks (Basic, Standard and Enhanced), known as Disclosures, to individual applicants and, where appropriate, Registered Bodies.
Disclosure Scotland is accredited to BS EN ISO9001: 2000 for quality assurance purposes.
