Criminal Record Checks – Guidance

The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 provides a list of certain professions and employment that are excepted from the application of the 1974 Act for which complete knowledge about a person’s background is required for the protection of the pubic.

Since 2023 the profession of notaries has been an excepted profession which allows the Faculty Office to ask for and consider convictions and cautions that are spent, but not filtered, as well as those which are unspent. For more information please see the Guidance on criminal convictions and cautions which sets out the Faculty Office’s approach to considering criminal convictions of notaries and notary applicants.