PC v The Disclosure and Barring Service: [2025] UKUT 119 (AAC)
Upper Tribunal Administrative Appeals Chamber decision by Judge Stout on 27 March 2025.
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Judicial Summary
SAFEGUARDING VULNERABLE GROUPS (65)
The appellant was included by the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) on the children’s barred list pursuant to paragraph 3 of Schedule 3 to the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 (SVGA 2006) because he had “attempted to pay for, downloaded and viewed indecent images of children”. Since the decision, the appellant had been convicted of an offence of possession of indecent images of children so that his case would, if it had been considered by DBS at that stage, have fallen under the ‘auto-barring with representations’ provisions in paragraph 2 of Schedule 3. The Upper Tribunal decided that the conviction made no difference to the basis of the appeal which remained against DBS’s original decision. The Upper Tribunal decided that there were minor errors of fact in DBS’s decision largely as a result of failure properly to take into account the implications of the appellant’s diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder. However, the errors were not material. The Upper Tribunal decided there were no mistakes of fact or law in the decision and the appeal was dismissed.