Employers across the city are being asked to follow Bristol City Council’s lead and ban the tick box that asks about criminal convictions on job forms.
The authority signed up to become a Ban the Box employer last year in a bid to remove barriers to employment for people with criminal convictions.
The Ban the Box campaign, which originated in the USA, calls on employers to remove requests for disclosure of unspent criminal convictions on job application forms and to evaluate the skills, abilities and persona of all candidates equally before asking about criminal convictions.
Since April last year Bristol’s local authority has used job application forms without a tick box for all its roles that don’t require a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check.
Jobs that require such checks often relate to working with children or vulnerable groups of people.
And now the council is asking other employers across the city to consider doing the same thing.
During a City Gathering on Friday deputy mayor Asher Craig and Independent Chair for the Lammy Review Group, Desmond Brown, presented an update on work taking place to tackle serious youth violence and child criminal exploitation in the city.
Since January, when it was highlighted as a priority for city partners, work has been taking place to establish a new multi-agency team and mentoring programme.
During Friday’s event Cllr Craig also asked city partners in the room to consider becoming Ban the Box employers.
Speaking outside the event she said: “I am proud that we were the first local authority in the UK to become a Ban the Box employer and lead the way.
“By signing up to this initiative we took an important step in removing the barriers to employment faced by people who have criminal convictions.
“Bristol City Council is one of the largest employers in the city and is a place where people are given a fair opportunity to access employment based on their skills, strengths and experience first, rather than their past.”
By removing the tick box on application forms it will mean that anyone with an unspent conviction will not be asked about their past at the beginning of the recruitment process.
Only successful candidates will be asked about previous convictions.
However, the council says it along with other employers retains the right to withdraw a job offer in the event it is appropriate to do so.
The campaign is led in the UK by Business in the Community, which worked with the council to help it become a Ban the Box employer.
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