Please see below for update from Disclosure Scotland regarding PVG’s during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

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Disclosure Scotland is working closely with the Scottish Government and key stakeholders on our response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We have invoked our Business Continuity plans to prevent any disruption to our safeguarding services at this time of crisis.

We will prioritise checks for those who have the most sensitive roles in supporting this crisis. The criteria for prioritisation is based upon the role, namely:

• Healthcare
• Pharmaceutical
• Childcare
• Social work
• Social care
• Prisons and justice

Disclosure Scotland recognises the urgency in the current situation. If you have urgent applications that need to be prioritised because of COVID-19 please contact us on [email protected] with the application barcode and ‘position applied for’ – please ensure that you only use this email for critical applications, submit other applications in the normal way. When sending an urgent application through the post, please ensure the envelope is marked ‘urgent’.

If you are submitting urgent applications related to COVID-19 in the following weeks please contact our dedicated helpline on 0141 302 8511. We will want to plan with you how we go about doing this most efficiently. We are actively planning ways to be even more responsive to this crisis and we will keep our customers informed about any changes we are making to the PVG process.

To ensure Disclosure Scotland can rapidly react to the changing environment, the UK Coronavirus Bill introduced into the UK Parliament yesterday contains two provisions about the PVG Scheme.  The first provision means organisations recruiting staff ahead of a PVG check can do so without the risk of committing an offence. Barred individuals who seek to exploit this will be reported to Police Scotland. The second change will allow Disclosure Scotland to process all PVG disclosures as if a check of the UK barred lists had been requested. Once these changes have been brought into effect, Disclosure Scotland will engage with stakeholders, setting out what they will mean in practice. 

As the situation develops and evolves, the list of prioritised sectors may changes as Disclosure Scotland identifies other sectors with roles critical to supporting the Scottish Government during this crisis.

Thank you for your patience during this critical time