2008/9/10 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
I just got off the phone with the charities commission (should probably have done that sooner and saved all this discussion!), and the woman I spoke to didn't think CRB checks would be required just for handling the details of children, they'd only be required if the trustees are actually going to be in contact with the children (AGMs and things don't count, since those are all in groups). Anyone that is going to be going into schools, or similar, would need to be checked, of course. She did recommend that the charity have a specific policy saying that trustees wouldn't have any contract with children (without being checked).
This sounds sensible, and is pretty much what I was about to recommend :-)
Bear in mind that we're not talking about people who will come into contact with children; we're not talking about people whose job is to handle the details of children; we're talking about a situation where people will occasionally handle a small amount of personal information which *may* include the details of a small number of children.
If nothing else, the CRB checks are expensive, time consuming - people often work for several months before their checks clear! - and also require additional infrastructure to handle (what do you *do* with the CRB disclosures once you've got them?). It makes sense to leave them until they turn out to be critical, just in terms of getting the organisation up and running quickly and simply and cheaply.
[I speak as someone with a CRB clearance, incidentally, but not an "on spec" one...]