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Depending on the level of check, old convictions, cautions and reprimands might appear on your form once returned to you. So how do you tackle this with your employer, and maximise the chances of being offered the job?

Every few months the DBS system hits the headlines due to some huge delay over processing applications which means someone doesn’t get a job they’ve been promised. The government sets national targets for processing DBS forms, but as it’s the job of the 43 separate police forces across England and Wales to process the checks, it’s perhaps not a surprise that performance varies hugely depending on where you live.

One of the best-known gig economy companies is Uber, the private hire taxi company. But it’s not as simple as signing up on a company website, picking up the car keys and heading off for your first pick-up.

As an employer are you being too picky about the people you’re employing? According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), over half of employers in the UK are struggling to fill vacancies due to shortages in skilled applicants.

The UK aviation sector is booming as more of us than ever take budget flights overseas or fly for business. Increased passenger numbers mean more opportunities for work in airports up and down the country, whether that be in retail or food outlets, as a customs officer, security worker or on the check-in desk. So what types of jobs and salaries are on offer?

There’s been a gradual shift in the way we’re all thinking about taking a gap year or a sabbatical from work. Gone are the days of spending the year backpacking around South East Asia, taking jobs in bars or shops to fund the next leg of the trip. Young people – and older people on a career break – are nowadays more interested in doing something worthwhile with their time away from the UK.

Gone are the days where it was almost impossible to find out what sort of information official bodies held about us. Data Protection legislation, which has recently been superseded by the GDPR, allows us to request that companies send us the information which is held about us in paper records or on computer, and also gives us the right to have any mistakes on that information corrected.

There’s no getting around having a DBS check when you are applying for certain professions. The list of jobs and situations in which applicants need a DBS is set down in law by the government, and so employers are not free to decide who has a DBS check and who doesn’t. A DBS check looks into your criminal record, and lists convictions and cautions which are on the Police computer.

The figures are startling – around £40 million lost each year by UK businesses due to fraud by employees. Fraud within organisations takes many forms, from the simplest type of fraud whereby someone just steals cash from their workplace, to more complex types of fraud where the employee manipulates accounts of their friends or family. Tracking down fraud can be tricky, but there are certain “red flags” which might indicate there’s something going on to worry about.

In an ideal world, the process of getting your DBS check would always run very smoothly. Usually, DBS checks are issued within around two weeks of them being requested, but statistics repeatedly show that some areas are consistently failing to issue certificates within this timescale.