Agenda item

Ban the box

Report of the Director of Human Resources.

Minutes:

The Committee considered a Report of the Director of Human Resources concerning “Ban the Box”

 

Natasha Lloyd-Owen, attending the meeting as a guest of the Committee, expressed her delight that Members were now at a point where this policy can be implemented. If offered the Corporation an opportunity to be a trailblazer in this area, and, given the disproportionate number of BAME individuals with a criminal conviction relative to the population as a whole, implementation of the policy would be a welcome and positive development to sit alongside the other proposals that were currently being considered by the Tackling Racism Taskforce.

 

The Chair indicated their support for the policy and thanked Ms Lloyd-Owen for her sterling efforts in ensuring that this was now ready for Members to consider implementing.

 

The Deputy Chair reiterated the Chair’s thanks to Ms Lloyd-Owen and, after querying whether officers would have enough support and guidance on next steps if a conviction did come to light, she was reassured that once selected for interview, applicants would be required to complete a self-disclosure form; at that point, if a conviction did come to light, a risk assessment would be undertaken. The aim of the policy was to remove any sub-conscious biases of the employer at the selection stage.

 

If a conviction came to light when a self-disclosure form was submitted, officers would need to exercise judgement on whether the nature of the offence merited further action; clearly, some offences (e.g. safeguarding and financial crime) were more serious than others.

 

In response to a separate query, officers confirmed that, after internal consultation, the schools and those departments with DBS posts would not be signing up to the policy, and offences would still need to be declared by candidates at the point of application.

 

RESOLVED - Members approved the implementation of the “Ban the Box” scheme and that authority is delegated to the Director of Human Resources to approve the revisions to the relevant policy, procedure and guidance documents cited in the report.

 

Supporting documents: