Case studies
Discover How Our Legal Intervention Has Restored Futures
Explore real stories of individuals just like you who turned to us at pivotal moments and how our timely legal intervention helped protect their future, dignity, and livelihood.
Medical Student Deletes Arrest Record After Previous Lawyer’s Application Was Refused
Our client was a medical student, part way through their degree. They had been arrested following an allegation of sexual assault. The matter never went any further. No charge was brought and the case was closed. But the arrest remained on the Police National Computer, where records of this kind are kept until a person reaches 100 years of age.
For a young person at the start of a medical career, that was a heavy thing to carry. The course required Enhanced DBS checks, and there would be many more over a working life in medicine. Whether or not the arrest would ever be disclosed, the possibility was always there, and so was the knowledge that an allegation of that nature sat against their name on a national police database. The family had already tried to deal with it. They had instructed another lawyer to apply for deletion, and that application was refused.
They came to us worried, and very anxious about their child’s future.
Assault Caution Removed for Doctor After Police Refusal Is Overturned on Appeal
Our client was a doctor with an unblemished record who had never had any contact with the police. That changed in the space of a few seconds. During a confrontation with a stranger in a public place, our client reacted instinctively to the other person’s behaviour. Nobody was hurt. The other person reported it, and our client was interviewed and accepted a conditional caution for assault.
Like many people in that position, our client accepted the caution without a full understanding of what it would mean. The consequences arrived quickly. The caution had to be disclosed to the professional regulator, which opened its own enquiry. It would appear on every Enhanced DBS check for the rest of our client’s career. And it threw a shadow over plans for the future that had nothing to do with the incident at all.
On the face of it, the record looked difficult to challenge. Our client had admitted the offence and accepted the caution, and the police were satisfied that it had been properly given. But the record told almost nothing of what had actually happened, or of the circumstances our client was in at the time.
Care Assistant Clears Enhanced DBS Allegation That Threatened Her Nursing Career
Our client was a care assistant with ambitions to qualify as a nurse. She was working in care while training, building the experience and placements her nursing career would depend on. Then a colleague made an allegation that she had fallen asleep on duty, leaving patients unsupervised.
What happened next is striking for what did not happen. The police never spoke to her. She was never interviewed, never asked for her account, never given the opportunity to respond to the allegation. The matter was referred onwards as a safeguarding concern, and the Disclosure and Barring Service considered whether she should be barred from working in regulated activity. The DBS decided she should not be barred. On any sensible view, that should have been the end of it.
It was not. The allegation had become a police record, and when her Enhanced DBS certificate was next checked through the DBS Update Service, the allegation surfaced as relevant police information. As our guide on allegations on Enhanced DBS certificates explains, the police can disclose unproven allegations where they consider them relevant and proportionate — even where the person has never been charged, interviewed, or given any chance to reply.
The consequences were immediate. She was unable to apply for care roles with the disclosure on her certificate, and her nursing training itself was under threat, because the disclosure jeopardised the clinical placements her course required. An allegation she had never been asked about was now standing between her and the career she was working towards.
Senior Nurse Clears Intoxication Allegation from Enhanced DBS Certificate
Our client was a senior nurse working in elderly care. She had built her career around her patients, some of whom she had known and cared for over many years. Then a care worker on her ward made an allegation that changed everything: that she had been intoxicated on duty, based on a claim that she seemed overly familiar with a patient and smelled of alcohol.
The reality was very different. The patient in question was a man she had nursed for years and knew closely — her warmth with him was the familiarity of a long caring relationship, not evidence of impairment. And critically, another member of staff had in fact been intoxicated on duty around the same time. Our client, who denied drinking and was never tested, was effectively tarred by association with someone else’s misconduct.
The police interviewed her and the matter was dropped with no further action. A barring referral was pursued, and the Disclosure and Barring Service decided she should not be barred. Yet despite the NFA outcome and the decision not to bar her, the allegation surfaced on her Enhanced DBS certificate when a background check was run. As our guide on relevant police information on Enhanced DBS certificates explains, the police can disclose allegations of this kind even where every formal process has ended in her favour.
By this point she had been dismissed from her post. Between the barring referral, the certificate and the stress of it all, she had been too overwhelmed to pursue an employment appeal at the time. Now the disclosure was preventing her from finding new nursing work — an intoxication allegation on a certificate is close to unemployable territory for a nurse, however untested the allegation may be.