Vince Gaskell – former change director at the Child Support Agency (CSA) – has taken over as chief executive of the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB), now a free-standing agency within the Home Office tasked with checking the records of thousands of operatives in the security sector.

The CRB was established under Part V of the Police Act 1997 to improve access to criminal records checks through a service (now widely known as Disclosure) to more organisations in a wider range of sectors. The organisation became fully operational on 11 March last year, and as of last July had issued some two million Disclosures.

The number of applications lodged with the CRB that are over six weeks old are now said to be less than 5% of all outstanding applications, which should go some way towards appeasing guarding contractors and their clients who had expressed concern that application processing wasn't taking place quite so quickly.

Gaskell has spent most of his career in the Department for Work, and boasts a wide-ranging operational history. He has successfully implemented complex Information Technology projects in the CSA under the Private Finance Initiative banner.

Bernard Harden – current chief executive of the Passport and Records Agency (which incorporates both the CRB and the UK Passport Service) – will continue in his role as chief executive of the Passport Agency.

Source

SMT