Staff working with children and vulnerable adults to pay £64 for official checks

Individuals that want to work with children and vulnerable adults will have to pay a £64 fee to get official checks carried out.

From October 2009, the new Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) will mean a single vetting body maintains a list of people who are not allowed to work with children or vulnerable adults.

The ISA was one of the recommendation of the Bichard Report into the murders of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells in Soham by school caretaker Ian Huntley in 2002.

The authority will work alongside the Criminal Records Bureau, which will continue to issue criminal records disclosures to help employers make recruitment decisions.

The fee will consist of two components: an ISA registration fee of £28 and a CRB enhanced disclosure, currently £36, which provides employers with details of information held on police records about potential staff members. However, there will be no cost for volunteers.

Home Office minister Meg Hillier said: "From October 2009, employers will be able to check that individual staff members have been assessed for work with vulnerable groups, further enhancing one of the most robust employment checking systems in the world."

ISA chairman Roger Singleton said the start date had been reached after consultation with employers.

"This is a complex scheme which will cover 11.3 million people within a wide variety of workplaces. Starting in 2009 will allow us to ensure an improved level of safeguarding as well the development of better information sharing systems," he said.