Volunteers could pay price in CRB's effort to boost income

This from "Young People Now"

The Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) is considering making volunteers pay for police checks.

It is understood that the bureau is keen to change the "operational definition" of volunteering to reduce the number of people who receive free checks, and increase its income.

An estimated one in five CRB checks are carried out on volunteers. They are currently offered free to those meeting its definition of volunteers - people who are not paid, but who do receive some expenses. The bureau wants to limit this definition to those who receive nothing.

If the change goes ahead, it would be strongly contested by voluntary youth work organisations, many of whom already struggle to encourage people to volunteer.

The CRB is known as a 'next steps' agency, a discrete business unit within the Home Office, which is accountable to the department, but given the freedom to manage its own business.

Andy Forster, policy and campaign strategist at Volunteering England, said: "(The CRB) looked at all sorts of ways to reduce costs and increase their income and one way of doing this is to stop free checks and start charging for them.

"Our view is that when people from under-represented groups are being encouraged to volunteer, it's ridiculous that government departments and 'next steps' agencies are trying to create a disincentive and a barrier to their involvement."

The considerations coincide with a review being conducted by the Department of Trade and Industry into whether changes should be made to the national minimum wage to accommodate "volunteer workers".

A Home Office spokesman said there were no current plans to change the definition of volunteers on the CRB web site.

He said: "It might be something that's being looked at, but not necessarily something that they or we would want to do."

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