The Home Office has begun to look for a replacement for the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) and Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA), with a tender for a company to run outsourced disclosure and barring services.
The new service will bring the CRB and ISA together, and is aimed at supporting the implementation of the protection of freedoms bill.
It will involve the receipt and processing of referrals for a barring decision, applications for disclosure, workflow management, customer and registration services, the issuing of certificates, payment services and running a call centre. All of the services will have to be accessible through the Home Office’s desktops and infrastructure platform.
The tender notice in the Official Journal of the European Union says the contract will last for eight years and is valued at between £250m and £350m.
As yet there is no firm date for the new service to come into effect. A Home Office briefing on the protection and freedoms bill says that timescales will be finalised when the bill receives royal assent, which is expected to be in mid-2012.
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