I just received this email about a school in Devon undergoing building works: ‘Our two boys attend a grammar school in Devon (every possible Ofsted accolade) where they were told in assembly that with the construction of a new block they were not to speak to any builder, and that no builder must speak to them or he will face dismissal. How can we possibly hope to build any kind of better (or ‘big’) society with such an frightening lack of trust, not to mention courtesy? The school’s instructions sound like something out of a 1950s sci-fi nightmare.’ The business of bringing…

This email from a gentleman in Cambridge describes how photos in places related to children – even if there are no children actually present – have also become latently suspicious: ‘I was recently taking part in a work-organised “treasure hunt” team-building activity. One of the clues that we had to follow led to a toy shop in the tiny village in Cambridgeshire. The organisers had asked for one of the team to be photographed standing alongside Thomas the Tank Engine, the allegedly popular children’s storybook character. No sooner had one of my colleagues posed beside a toy TTE, and another colleague whipped…

I just received an email from a man who has been stringently checked for his role in police custody suites – but who is unable to get access to a school governors’ committee meeting. ‘I am an independent police custody visitor (voluntary and unpaid) and was appointed last year but only after I underwent a stringent police check, which I understand is more rigorous than an enhanced CRB check. I have an identity card issued by the police and signed by the chief constable giving me the right to access police custody suites in my area unannounced at any time of day…

Further to the case of mothers whose children’s faces were blacked out in school records (for ‘child protection’ reasons), I’ve just been sent this email by a father from the north of England, who is experiencing a similar problem. He makes extremely valuable points about the futility of these photo-ban policies, which do nothing to protect children and merely ruin their memories and records of their school life. These are extracts from a letter he wrote to school authorities: ‘Whilst it is great to have such a record of my child’s time at school, it is the fact that you feel it…

‘Street pastors’ in Shropshire patrol the streets at night, and help revelers who have lost their bearings (or their feet) make their way home. The qualifications required for such good Samaritans are as follows: you must be a church member; you must want to spend their Saturday night propping up drunk people and listening to their ramblings. Also – in a sign of the suspicious spirit that reigns in religious institutions – you must ‘have a complete CRB check and be able to commit to a full training programme’. The reason for this requirement is that that drunk people (along with homeless…

Councils are up in arms over government plans to cut CRB checks for taxi drivers. The government plans to only request taxi drivers to get ‘standard’ CRBs (which checks for cautions, convictions, or reprimands), rather than ‘enhanced’ CRBs (which includes all other information on local police records, and child protection registers). Yet it is strange that ‘enhanced’ CRBs as seen as a guarantee of safety. The point about notes on police local computers is that they are unproven – they could be hearsay, or malicious allegations. So such notes are just as likely to incriminate an innocent man as they are to…