SIA licensing checks: 5 year address history
Published 16 February 2022
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1. Request
If someone is to apply and be granted a licence, I understand that you go back 5 years when looking at residence and criminal records. If an individual lives in England but is previously from Scotland but tells you that they have lived in England for 5 years, would you still grant a licence based on only 3 years of ‘paperwork’ in good faith or would you demand proof of the 5 years residence at that English address?
2. Response
I confirm that the SIA holds the information you have requested.
The SIA does not issue a licence based on good faith. We carry out a series of checks on each applicant to ensure that they are fit and proper to be licensed. These checks are detailed in Get Licensed.
Among the checks we carry out are verification checks on the address details provided by each applicant for the 5-year period, with any discrepancies being followed up accordingly. While the SIA looks at an applicant’s address history over the last 5 years, there is not a related time limit in respect of the criminality check.
For the avoidance of doubt, the main difference in the application process between an applicant who lives in England and an applicant who lives in Scotland is the disclosure body used to carry out the criminality check (DBS in England or Disclosure Scotland in Scotland).
[Reference: FOI 0316]