What does a DBS check show?

The phrase “DBS check” describes several different certificates. They do not reveal the same information, and the certificate's contents do not answer every recruitment question. A Basic certificate is primarily about unspent convictions and conditional cautions. A Standard certificate can include some spent information after the filtering rules are applied. An Enhanced certificate can add relevant locally held police information. An eligible Enhanced application may also include a check of one or both barred lists. The lawful level comes from the role, not an employer's wish to know more.

The current DBS employer guidance explains the core differences. The DBS filtering guide, updated in September 2026, explains which criminal records may be protected from automatic disclosure on Standard and Enhanced certificates. These rules also affect what an employer may ask an applicant to self-declare. A “clear” result means no information was disclosed under the checks run at that time. It is not a guarantee that the person has never been investigated, is safe in every role, or will remain free of future concerns.

This page owns the information-content question. The check-level selector owns which level the duties may lawfully support. The Basic, Standard and Enhanced pages provide level-specific application detail. Here the aim is to help a reader interpret the certificate and avoid both excessive disclosure requests and false reassurance.

Compare the four information outputs

This table describes the types of information, not an automatic hierarchy of permitted checks. The statutory routes for Standard, Enhanced and barred-list access are different. A person cannot simply pay extra to move from Basic to Enhanced. A taxi licensing application may lawfully request both lists under a specific Other workforce provision, while ordinary taxi driving is not itself regulated activity. Another job with direct child or adult work may qualify through a regulated-activity route. The barred-list guide owns those eligibility boundaries.

What a Basic certificate can and cannot tell you

The DBS employer guidance says a Basic certificate contains convictions and conditional cautions that are unspent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. It can be used for any position or purpose, subject to a proportionate and lawful recruitment process. An individual can request their own Basic check. An employer may arrange one through the appropriate channel with consent. A Basic certificate is not a limited form of Enhanced police intelligence; it serves a different disclosure purpose.

If a conviction does not appear on Basic, do not conclude that the applicant has no past conviction. It may be spent, outside the relevant record, or otherwise not disclosed in that certificate. Equally, do not assume a spent record will be included on a Standard certificate. Filtering may protect it. A Basic result also says nothing about Children's or Adults' Barred List status. An employer whose role is eligible for a list check should not use Basic as a substitute for that legally relevant information.

The point at which a conviction becomes spent depends on the sentence or disposal and current law. A recruiter should not try to calculate it from an applicant's age alone. The GOV.UK criminal record disclosure service helps individuals understand what they may need to tell an employer. An applicant with a complex record should seek independent advice rather than treating an online article as a personalised disclosure decision.

Standard certificates and protected records

A Standard certificate can show spent and unspent convictions and adult cautions held on the Police National Computer, subject to the current filtering rules. It is available only where the work or position has a statutory basis. An applicant cannot generally order their own Standard certificate; a recruiting organisation uses a Registered Body. The certificate does not include the role-specific locally held police information that may appear on an Enhanced certificate. It also does not check a barred list.

Filtering is the legal mechanism that prevents certain old or minor records from being automatically included on Standard and Enhanced certificates. A record that is filtered is often called protected. The DBS filtering guide is the current source for the detailed conditions. The fact that a conviction is spent is not enough on its own to tell whether it will appear. Some spent convictions remain disclosable; some become protected after the relevant period and other conditions are met.

Current DBS guidance says all unspent conditional cautions and convictions are disclosed on Standard and Enhanced checks, reflecting the change effective for certificates issued on or after 28 October 2023. This aligns the minimum automatic PNC information with what a Basic check would show. It does not mean a Standard certificate includes every historical allegation or every police record. Nor does it mean an employer can ask a question broader than its lawful entitlement.

Standard eligibility can be found in roles and licences outside the familiar child and adult safeguarding settings. A role's legal category must be checked rather than assigning Standard simply because it seems midway between Basic and Enhanced. The Standard check guide covers the application route. This page focuses on the contents and what a Standard result means for the person reading it.

Enhanced certificates and locally held police information

An Enhanced certificate contains the Standard level's PNC information and can include additional information held locally by police. A chief officer must consider whether that information is relevant to the role and whether it ought to be disclosed. The Home Office statutory disclosure guidance governs that police decision. An allegation, investigation or other non-conviction information can in principle be considered, but inclusion is not automatic just because the police hold a record.

The workforce and position on the application matter. DBS employer guidance says police assess relevance against the child, adult or Other workforce used in the original application. That is why an Enhanced certificate issued for one role should not be treated as universal evidence for a different role. A new employer should verify the original certificate, identity, level, workforce and any barred-list element before deciding whether an old certificate is suitable. The portability guide owns that reuse decision.

The DBS filtering guide notes that a filtered PNC offence will not automatically appear in the conviction section, but police may in principle disclose related information on an Enhanced certificate where they consider it relevant and appropriate under the statutory guidance. This distinction is easy to miss. Filtering is not an absolute promise that every piece of related local police information is invisible in every Enhanced context. If the applicant thinks locally held information is wrong or should not have been included, the dispute guide explains the official challenge route.

An Enhanced certificate does not automatically include either barred list. The application must identify a separate lawful reason to request the Children's or Adults' Barred List, or both where permitted. The ordinary wording “Enhanced DBS” is therefore insufficient when a commissioner needs to know whether a barred-list check was performed. Check the actual certificate rather than assuming from a vendor label or a spreadsheet column.

What barred-list information adds

DBS maintains separate barred lists for children and adults. For an eligible Enhanced application, the relevant list check indicates whether the person is barred from regulated activity with the group. A job may justify the children's list, the adults' list or both. The permitted combination depends on the legal basis for the role. A higher level of disclosure is not always a stronger or better check if it asks about the wrong group.

If a person is barred from regulated activity with children, that is a serious legal fact for child regulated-activity work. The same is true for the adult list and adult regulated activity. Certain non-regulated positions may also have lawful access to a list under specific provisions, so barred-list entitlement should not be reduced to a single slogan. The detailed children's barred-list and adults' barred-list owners explain the lists. This page explains what the certificate shows, not the full barring or referral decision.

Do not confuse “not requested” with “not barred”. If an application did not include the relevant list, the certificate cannot answer that list question. Likewise, a result that shows no information in the criminal-record section is not proof that the proper barred-list check was included. The employer must inspect the certificate's level and list fields and ensure its own request had a lawful basis. It should not rely on an intermediary's “pass” badge that hides which elements were checked.

DBS may consider information for barring in specified circumstances when an eligible barred-list application is made. That process is not identical to what an employer sees on a certificate. A certificate does not give the employer every piece of evidence DBS considered, nor does a clear certificate make DBS the employer's suitability decision-maker. The organisation must maintain references, identity, qualification and safeguarding checks relevant to the role.

Filtering: the rules behind a missing or disclosed record

The current DBS filtering table says a specified offence is always disclosed on Standard and Enhanced certificates, subject to its stated youth-caution exception. Convictions resulting in a custodial sentence, including a suspended sentence, are also always disclosed. The rules for non-specified convictions and adult cautions depend on the applicant's age at the time and how long ago the disposal occurred. These are automatic PNC disclosure rules, not a rule that every disclosed conviction must disqualify the person from every job.

For a non-specified adult caution, the current table uses a six-year period. For a non-specified conviction without a custodial sentence, it uses an eleven-year period when the person was at least 18 at conviction, or five and a half years when they were under 18. Those periods are applied alongside the status of the offence, the type of disposal and the unspent-record rule. An applicant or employer should use current DBS guidance to evaluate a specific record; a bare date in a blog cannot determine whether it is protected. The specified-offence list and equivalent overseas offences can be particularly complex.

The 2020 changes removed the former multiple-conviction rule. Having more than one conviction does not automatically mean every conviction appears forever; each is considered against the remaining rules. Youth cautions, reprimands and warnings are not automatically disclosed, with the exception described by DBS for youth conditional cautions. Do not repeat an old application form's suggestion that every final warning must be declared. The DBS guide notes that some printed application-form wording has lagged the legal change and explains the current response.

Filtering protects certain information from automatic disclosure on a Standard or Enhanced certificate. It also limits what an eligible employer may ask in a criminal-record self-declaration. The DBS guide says an employer may only request convictions and cautions it is legally entitled to know about. Taking protected information into account can be unlawful. This is a separate question from whether an Enhanced police disclosure may include relevant local information after its own legal test.

What an employer may ask before seeing a certificate

If a role only justifies a Basic check, the employer should not ask a candidate to reveal all spent convictions. For a legally eligible Standard or Enhanced role, the questions should reflect the filtering rules and omit protected material. The current DBS guidance provides example wording and tells employers to update forms that ask for every conviction or caution without qualification. A consent signature does not create legal entitlement to spent or protected information that the role does not permit the employer to seek.

Provide the applicant with the correct role description and check level before asking them to self-declare. A vague form saying “Have you ever been in trouble with the police?” is likely to capture information outside a normal DBS disclosure question. Explain what is being asked, why the role permits it, who will see it and how the organisation will use it. Where the law permits an exempted question, do not assume that every disclosed record is automatically relevant to the job.

An applicant who is uncertain about a complex history can use official Ministry of Justice and DBS guidance or obtain specialist advice. An employer should not create its own filtering calculator from a few remembered thresholds. The work may involve a specified offence, overseas equivalence, multiple disposals or a local police disclosure. The correct approach is a lawful question, the appropriate DBS application and a fair case-by-case assessment of the information actually available.

Six scenarios that show the limits of the result

A warehouse applicant has an old spent conviction. A Basic certificate may show no record because the conviction is spent. That says nothing definitive about what a legally eligible Standard certificate would show after filtering. The warehouse job may not be eligible for Standard at all. The employer should not order a higher level to investigate a suspicion it is not legally entitled to pursue.

An adult applicant has a non-specified caution from many years ago. The current filtering rules may protect it after the relevant period. The employer's self-declaration question should not require disclosure of protected information. The exact outcome depends on offence type, age and date, and should be checked against current DBS guidance rather than inferred from this short example.

A school applicant has an Enhanced certificate with no conviction entry. That does not prove the application included the Children's Barred List. Check the certificate and the role-specific legal basis. The school should also perform the other safer-recruitment steps required in its setting. A clear certificate is one part of the evidence, not a universal safeguarding approval.

An applicant receives locally held police information they dispute. The employer should recognise that this is not necessarily a conviction. It should consider role relevance and fairness, and the applicant can use the official DBS dispute route. Neither party should circulate the certificate widely while the issue is reviewed. The fact that the police disclosed information does not predetermine the employer's final decision.

A care provider receives an old Enhanced certificate from another employer. The contents might reflect a different workforce, barred-list request or position. An Update Service status check, where lawfully available with consent, reports whether the certificate has changed; it does not rewrite the original certificate for the new care role. The provider must check legal entitlement and suitability for its actual duties.

A candidate worked abroad for several years. A DBS certificate generally cannot be expected to contain a complete overseas criminal record. The employer may need country-specific evidence under a proportionate policy and sector guidance. The overseas criminal-record checks guide owns that separate process. A clear DBS certificate should not be described as “worldwide police clearance”.

Make a suitability decision without inventing a DBS verdict

DBS issues information for an eligible purpose. It does not usually pass or fail a person for every job. The employer should verify identity, review the actual certificate, ask for an explanation where appropriate and assess information in relation to the role. Consider the nature of the matter, time since it occurred, circumstances, evidence of change and the specific risk of the work. Separate legal restrictions, such as barring from regulated activity, from other information that requires a proportionate suitability decision.

A recruitment policy should identify who may view a certificate and who can make the decision. It should avoid blanket rejection of any person with a disclosed record unless a particular legal bar or role requirement applies. The current DBS filtering guide advises case-by-case consideration and recording reasons, especially where a candidate is rejected. The organisation should also give the applicant a reasonable opportunity to discuss information rather than relying solely on an automated “red” status from a screening supplier.

The certificate's date matters. It reflects checks at the time it was issued and has no universal statutory expiry date. An employer can set a risk-based review cycle, and some licensing or sector policies have additional requirements. The Update Service may help with permitted Standard and Enhanced status checks, but it does not return a full narrative of new information or replace the original certificate. A new role may require a new eligibility assessment even when the old status is current.

Handle the certificate as sensitive information. Record the lawful purpose, level, workforce, barred-list element where justified, date the original was seen and the suitability decision. Do not routinely copy the full certificate into a general worker folder. The DBS record-keeping guide explains proportionate metadata and limited retention. A worker may dispute a mistake through DBS; the employer should not quietly edit or suppress an official certificate entry in its own software.

Complys may support generic worker evidence and configured reminders where that capability is available. It does not determine legal DBS eligibility or make a suitability decision. A useful free tool could compare the four types of information in plain language and direct readers to current official sources without predicting an individual's disclosure from a few inputs.