Do contractors need DBS checks when working in schools?

The test: is the work regulated activity?

The starting point is the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 as amended by the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, and the expectations set out in Keeping Children Safe in Education. Work in a school is regulated activity when it is unsupervised and carried out frequently — broadly, once a week or more, on four or more days in a 30-day period, or overnight. Anyone in regulated activity must have an enhanced DBS certificate including a children's barred list check, and it is a criminal offence to knowingly engage a barred person.

Where the work is not regulated activity, the school cannot lawfully request a barred list check. An enhanced check without the barred list may still be available, and in many cases a basic check plus supervision is the proportionate answer. This is the part schools most often get wrong in both directions: some demand enhanced checks for a window cleaner who never enters the building, others let a long-term refurbishment team move around a live site with nothing recorded at all.

Four situations, four different answers

• Long-term contractor working unsupervised in occupied areas — for example a catering contractor, cleaning staff or a peripatetic music tutor engaged through an agency. Regulated activity: enhanced DBS with barred list check, recorded before they start.
• Building works in a hoarded-off, segregated compound — no pupil access, separate welfare and separate entrance. Usually not regulated activity. Identity checks, induction and a maintained segregation plan are what matter, not blanket DBS demands.
• Occasional repairs during the school day — a boiler engineer, a glazier after a break-in. Not frequent, so not regulated activity. Supervise and escort.
• Out-of-hours and holiday work — no pupils on site, so no opportunity for contact. Identity, competence and lone-working arrangements are the live issues here; DBS is not.

What "supervised" has to look like

Supervision is the lawful alternative to a barred list check, but only if it is real. The Department for Education's statutory guidance on the supervision of activity with children expects supervision to be regular, day to day, and reasonable in all the circumstances — by someone who is themselves in regulated activity. In a school that means a named member of staff who knows they are responsible, not a general sense that someone will keep an eye out.

In practice, the schools that manage this well do three simple things: they name the supervising postholder on the permit or works order, they brief the contractor at sign-in about which areas are out of bounds and when, and they write down who escorted whom. That record is what turns a judgement call into a defensible decision six months later.

Recording the decision — single central record and contractor log

Keeping Children Safe in Education requires schools to record the checks made on people working under a contract to provide education, on the single central record. For other contractors, a separate contractor log is normally the cleaner solution: company, named individuals, check level held and verified by whom, date, work area, supervision arrangement and sign-out.

Where a contractor subscribes to the DBS Update Service, an online status check with their consent takes a minute and is free. Where they do not, sight of the original certificate and a dated note of what you saw is the minimum. What does not stand up is a framework agreement clause stating that the supplier checks its own staff, with nothing verified at the gate.

Where safeguarding and health and safety meet

DBS is only one half of contractor control. The same visit needs competence and insurance checks before appointment, a reviewed method statement and risk assessment, permits for hot works, roof access or isolation, and confirmation that the contractor has seen the asbestos register before disturbing the fabric of the building. A contractor with an immaculate DBS certificate can still put a drill through an asbestos ceiling tile or wedge a fire door open for a cable run.

The two duties are best handled by one process at one point — sign-in — rather than by two separate teams who each assume the other has covered it. See contractor management in schools for the full arrangement, and what is health and safety in schools? for how contractor control fits alongside the school's other statutory duties.

The mistakes I see most often

• No written position at all — every visit decided on the spot by whoever is on reception.
• Blanket enhanced-with-barred-list demands for work that is plainly not regulated activity, which slows jobs down and is not lawful.
• "Supervised" on paper, unaccompanied in practice, because the named supervisor was teaching.
• Agency and sub-contracted staff arriving in place of the checked individuals, with no re-check at the gate.
• Contractor records kept in a paper visitors' book that nobody can reconstruct when an allegation is made.

A workable school position

Set out one page in your contractor arrangements that answers three questions for every engagement: is this regulated activity, who supervises if it is not, and where is the check or the escort recorded? Brief reception and the site team on it, and review it with your safeguarding lead once a year. That is proportionate, it satisfies both safeguarding and health and safety expectations, and it takes far less time than arguing about certificates in the car park.

How SchoolSafe Systems helps

Contractor control is one of the areas reviewed in the SchoolSafe school health and safety audit and in ongoing school compliance services. The output is a written contractor arrangement your site team can actually run, and evidence governors can see.