About the Criminal Records Bureau

The Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) is an executive agency of the Home Office set-up to help organisations make safer recruitment decisions.

Our work

This service enables organisations in the public, private and voluntary sectors to make safer recruitment decisions by identifying candidates who may be unsuitable for certain work, especially that involve children or vulnerable adults. The CRB was established under part five of the Police Act 1997 and was launched in March 2002.

Before the CRB

Prior to 2002, access to police checks was mainly confined to organisations in the statutory sector for staff who had 'substantial unsupervised access' to children. There were many other organisations that could not access these checks and yet had staff with similar access to vulnerable groups. The CRB enables many more organisations to access these checks as part of good recruitment practice