Should you inform your employer of being arrested?

43066 · 15 Mar 2024

Mod note: split from thread Was I arrested?

friedfish231 said:
My question is does this count as being arrested? I’ve recently read my employment contract which states that I must inform my employer if I am arrested or subsequently cautioned or convicted of any offence.

Obviously, I’d rather not reveal my current situation to my employer but I need to know if I have to (if what happens does indeed count as being ‘arrested’).

It’s difficult to see how your employer could ever find out, even if you had been arrested (which you weren’t). So you might well take the view that saying nothing was the best course of action.

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Haywain · 15 Mar 2024

43066 said:
It’s difficult to see how your employer could ever find out, even if you had been arrested (which you haven’t). So you might well take the view that saying nothing was the best course of action.

Whilst not applicable to the OP this is terrible advice. Employers would regard the withholding of such information as far more serious than the information itself. And they find out eventually.

43066 · 15 Mar 2024

Haywain said:
Whilst not applicable to the OP this is terrible advice. Employers would regard the withholding of such information as far more serious than the information itself. And they find out eventually.

Sorry but this is simply untrue in the vast majority of cases. How could they possibly find out you’d been arrested for a minor offence, unless you chose to tell them (outside of the rare cases where police disclose this information themselves, which they will only do if the person is deemed to be a risk to the public).

Frankly employers have no business asking for this kind of information in the first place. Even if they required their employees to undergo regular non-enhanced DBS checks, they still wouldn’t find out about arrests (or cautions, that are immediately spent).

spyinthesky · 15 Mar 2024

Haywain said:
Whilst not applicable to the OP this is terrible advice. Employers would regard the withholding of such information as far more serious than the information itself. And they find out eventually.

Having been arrested twice for suspicion of 2 violence related offences including firearms both which were not related to myself and both released without further investigation. Why would I need to inform any employer of this?

akm · 15 Mar 2024

43066 said:
Frankly employers have no business asking for this kind of information in the first place. Even if they required their employees to undergo regular non-enhanced DBS checks, they still wouldn’t find out about arrests (or cautions, that are immediately spent).

Yes, but this:

friedfish231 said:
my employment contract which states that I must inform my employer if I am arrested or subsequently cautioned or convicted of any offence.

suggests that the OP may not have a 'run of the mill' employer... I'm guessing some kind of security cleared position?

AlterEgo · 15 Mar 2024

spyinthesky said:
Having been arrested twice for suspicion of 2 violence related offences including firearms both which were not related to myself and both released without further investigation. Why would I need to inform any employer of this?

In the vast majority of cases you would have absolutely no obligation to do so. People in this country have civil rights which mean employers can’t - unless they are doing DBS checks or vetting for certain roles - force you to declare spent convictions or other interactions with the police.

Lockwood · 15 Mar 2024

As I've said elsewhere, my work place requires and requests that we notify our vetting person to get an update form for any police interaction - including as a witness.
One example given of a time that we need a change of circumstances (COC) form is activating a speed camera and receiving a NIP. Another was our HR lead as a witness in some antisocial behaviour cases.

They aren't specifically looking for the squeakiest clean record (though one guy did get released once his domestic violence history came up on vetting), but for the honesty of saying "this has happened"

Given we have several UK police forces in our customer base, I am not quite sure how "any communication with a police officer, not just as a suspect" fits in with that. Though I've got some written exemptions to when I need a COC done due to my work, so I would imagine that a team interacting with the police in a commercial environment would have similar exemptions... Imagine having to do a COC for attending a business meeting.

Outside of that, in a small business, if your employer reads in the local paper "Fred Smith, of Acacia Avenue was fined £500 for XYZ", they might be more upset than if Fred said "hey, boss, I've got into some trouble" first. Not saying there is a legal obligation, or that a big firm would notice. Thinking more on the scale of local shop everyone knows everything in the village scale, where it would be easier to tell the boss than for everyone else to have told them

Haywain · 15 Mar 2024

43066 said:
Sorry but this is simply untrue in the vast majority of cases.

OK, how about they might find out eventually? The point is that if they find out through a third party source the consequences will be more serious.

spyinthesky said:
Why would I need to inform any employer of this?

If there's nothing in your employment contract you probably wouldn't need to unless it involves you being unavailable to work.

uglymonkey · 15 Mar 2024

Surely the arrest isn't the issue ( you could be let go without charge) - it would be the subsequent caution or conviction would be the issue for an employer ( and show up on DBS) ??

AntoniC · 15 Mar 2024

Civil Servant here
In the two departments I have worked in my HR Guidance said
I have to notify my manager if
1) I am arrested
2) If I receive a Fixed Penalty Notice
3) If I am convicted in Court

Failure to do so leads me open to being dismissed for Gross Misconduct.

Haywain · 15 Mar 2024

AntoniC said:
Civil Servant here
In the two departments I have worked in my HR Guidance said
I have to notify my manager if
1) I am arrested
2) If I receive a Fixed Penalty Notice
3) If I am convicted in Court

Failure to do so leads me open to being dismissed for Gross Misconduct.

Slightly surprised that "If you are charged with an offence" doesn't feature in there.

AntoniC · 15 Mar 2024

Haywain said:
Slightly surprised that "If you are charged with an offence" doesn't feature in there.

oops - your right that should be in there

43066 · 15 Mar 2024

Haywain said:
OK, how about they might find out eventually? The point is that if they find out through a third party source the consequences will be more serious.

Unless you go out of your way to tell others, nobody other than you and the police will ever know of your arrest, so nobody would be in a position to inform them. Even if someone you’d told later decided to tell your work for malicious reasons, the employer won’t have any ability to verify this information.

This remote, theoretical possibility, also needs to be weighed against the embarrassment of volunteering the information, and indeed the risk the employer could decide to dismiss you immediately, based on your disclosure, if you’ve worked there for less than two years.

So I’d suggest not disclosing will generally be the safest course for most people.

Haywain said:
If there's nothing in your employment contract you probably wouldn't need to unless it involves you being unavailable to work.

Even if there is something in your employment contract, you probably still won’t need to, and it may well be better not to!

uglymonkey said:
it would be the subsequent caution or conviction would be the issue for an employer

Even here a basic DBS, which is all the vast majority of roles attract, will only show unspent convictions. Cautions, spent convictions, arrests etc. won’t show at all.

edwin_m · 15 Mar 2024

An arrest may not be widely known but a conviction is a matter of public record. Even if the employer wasn't aware of that, certain sentences would make the employee unavailable for work so the employer would find out then. If that happened and an employee had not previously notified the arrest despite being required to by the contract of employment, then it could be worse for the employee than if they'd been honest from the start.

N/100 · 16 Mar 2024

43066 said:
Unless you go out of your way to tell others, nobody other than you and the police will ever know of your arrest, so nobody would be in a position to inform them. Even if someone you’d told later decided to tell your work for malicious reasons, the employer won’t have any ability to verify this information.

As part of my employment contract I had to acknowledge that my employer had a vetting process and would vet criminal records etc. Agree with Haywain's post earlier that 43066s advice to withhold this information is most likely to make matters worse.

spyinthesky · 16 Mar 2024

N/100 said:
As part of my employment contract I had to acknowledge that my employer had a vetting process and would vet criminal records etc. Agree with Haywain's post earlier that 43066s advice to withhold this information is most likely to make matters worse.

Being arrested is not part of a criminal record vetting process.
I have held many job roles with various degrees of security level and not once have my 2 arrests been declared or subsequently been mentioned after the process completed.

N/100 · 16 Mar 2024

spyinthesky said:
Being arrested is not part of a criminal record vetting process.
I have held many job roles with various degrees of security level and not once have my 2 arrests been declared or subsequently been mentioned after the process completed.

You were released without further investigation. Maybe you were 100% confident that was going to be the outcome. And I'd be inclined not to disclose arrests that had led to no further action too.

In the general case, it won't be the outcome for everyone. And by the time a conviction has taken place, and it's clear that the news will come out, the breach of contract will have been some time before that, so you would be in difficult territory even if you disclosed at that point, simply for the late disclosure.

43066 · 16 Mar 2024

edwin_m said:
An arrest may not be widely known but a conviction is a matter of public record. Even if the employer wasn't aware of that, certain sentences would make the employee unavailable for work so the employer would find out then. If that happened and an employee had not previously notified the arrest despite being required to by the contract of employment, then it could be worse for the employee than if they'd been honest from the start.

If you’re going to be sent to prison then yes indeed, but the original question was about an arrest for a minor offence.

A conviction is a matter of public record, but not generally discoverable once spent. Note also that it’s generally unlawful for an employer to dismiss you on the basis of a spent conviction or circumstances ancillary thereto (see the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974).

N/100 said:
As part of my employment contract I had to acknowledge that my employer had a vetting process and would vet criminal records etc. Agree with Haywain's post earlier that 43066s advice to withhold this information is most likely to make matters worse.

But this doesn’t relate to the question being asked, and pointing out edge cases with enhanced security vetting (a tiny number of roles) doesn’t undermine my general point. I also haven’t advised anyone of anything, I’ve simply observed that many people may well reasonably take the view what it’s better to say nothing, for the reasons outlined above.

Lockwood · 16 Mar 2024

spyinthesky said:
Being arrested is not part of a criminal record vetting process.
I have held many job roles with various degrees of security level and not once have my 2 arrests been declared or subsequently been mentioned after the process completed.

And it is requested as part of my vetting.

Many years ago, I was asked some questions by the police because my old phone number was being used as part of a fraud scheme. I was the last registered user.
That held up my DBS as it was a case under active investigation, but now, many years later it still has to be declared under vetting even though there was no arrest, charge, station attendance, etc. I was a person of interest at one point, and that is a question that is asked as part of the annual vetting review.

AlterEgo · 16 Mar 2024

Lockwood said:
And it is requested as part of my vetting.

Many years ago, I was asked some questions by the police because my old phone number was being used as part of a fraud scheme. I was the last registered user.
That held up my DBS as it was a case under active investigation, but now, many years later it still has to be declared under vetting even though there was no arrest, charge, station attendance, etc. I was a person of interest at one point, and that is a question that is asked as part of the annual vetting review.

That would certainly be the case if you have to hold SC or Developed Vetting or something similar, but I can think of few other instances where it would be legal for an employer to force you to disclose such a thing.

Fawkes Cat · 16 Mar 2024

Since there's some dispute over whether a 'normal' employer is entitled to know about arrests, the answer in the real world would be to refer to an employment law specialist to determine whether there was such an entitlement. This might be a lawyer, who would not be cheap: for a union member it would probably be better to refer it to your local rep, who might happen to know but if not could escalate it so that the union would pay for asking a lawyer.

Tallguy · 16 Mar 2024

Start by reading your contract of employment and see what that says about notification of arrest. An arrest won’t show up on a DBS check, but the Americans ask about it when entering their country.

Two sets of standards.

A friend of mine was arrested twice for drink driving (2 separate occasions around 2 years apart). They were convicted on both occasions And the second time he lost his licence for almost 3 years IIRC. At the time he was working for a very well known media company, he read his contract and the company handbook, neither of which asked for disclosure of criminal offences so he didn’t. Driving licence wasn’t required for his desk job. He carried on working there for another decade.

43066 · 16 Mar 2024

Tallguy said:
At the time he was working for a very well known media company, he read his contract and the company handbook, neither of which asked for disclosure of criminal offences so he didn’t.

I’m the last person to defend drink driving - and someone convicted of it twice probably has a problem - but, that aside, there’s no conceivable way those arrests and subsequent convictions could have been discovered, even if his contract had stated that he should have disclosed them.

So what on earth would have been the benefit of approaching his manager and telling his employer about them?

DaleCooper · 16 Mar 2024

43066 said:
I’m the last person to defend drink driving - and someone convicted of it twice probably has a problem - but, that aside, there’s no conceivable way those arrests and subsequent convictions could have been discovered, even if his contract had stated that he should have disclosed them.

So what on earth would have been the benefit of approaching his manager and telling his employer about them?

Newspaper?

Gloster · 16 Mar 2024

There is always that little bit of chance. Somebody (X) that I knew round forty years ago lost his licence for a year for drink driving. He still commuted to work by bus as before and never bothered to tell his employers. Sometime after he got his licence back his loss was casually mentioned by someone to his boss at a social event: it was something on the lines of ‘I go sea fishing with X and he always drives us at the moment as I had to do it while his licence was suspended.’ The boss was unhappy as, due to the location of the yard, everybody was expected to be able to use the works’ van if need be. It wasn’t a formal requirement and he hadn’t used it while suspended, but it was a breach of an informal rule and might have cost him the foreman’s job.

And, yes, it seems that the boss was annoyed more because the matter had never been mentioned, when it could have suddenly caused a problem, than because it had happened, which could be mitigated in advance. So you could be risking your job against not having an unfortunate chance. My general opinion is read the rules very carefully and check the wording; better safe than out of a job.

glasgowniteowl · 17 Mar 2024

This page below regarding notifiable occupations guidance to the police is an interesting read and a lot of relevant information to the discussion.

For information only 006/2006: notifiable occupations scheme - revised guidance for police forces

www.gov.uk

Llanigraham · 17 Mar 2024

43066 said:
I’m the last person to defend drink driving - and someone convicted of it twice probably has a problem - but, that aside, there’s no conceivable way those arrests and subsequent convictions could have been discovered, even if his contract had stated that he should have disclosed them.

So what on earth would have been the benefit of approaching his manager and telling his employer about them?

Very wrong.
All Court convictions are in the public domain and are actually listed on a Notice available at the Court, plus many local press outlets peruse those lists and publish the details, especially about drink/drug driving.

Statto · 19 Mar 2024

Some jobs require a great deal of honesty & integrity, so some employees could find themselves on the end of a disciplinary case with potential for being fired from the job if they don't inform their employer of any infringement even if they weren't arrested.

I'm reminded of the infamous Stonegate fare dodge, although the fare dodger paid an out of court settlement, the media found out who he was & he got named & shamed, he then was fired from his job (presumably he didn't inform his employer of the offence) & ended up with a ban from his profession too.

spyinthesky · 19 Mar 2024

Keeping with the thread title as we seem to have wandered into being charged and convicted of an offence.
If I was arrested under suspicion of shooting at someone and released some hours later without charge or required to re-attend. I was under No obligation to inform my employer(and didn’t)
Having subsequently held various levels of security vetting with the same and different employers it was never a requirement to disclose the arrest.
Now to add a complication to the above, I was arrested by employees of my employer. Although this might seem to lack some detail, that is as far as I can go.

Should you inform your employer of being arrested?

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