It is the school who have a 'safeguarding policy' - which should include how they protect children from incoming threat, such as contractor staff. There is no reason you should have such a thing. What you need from the client is what their rules are. Generally there would be a clear physical segregation between contractors and the operational side of a school. However, heating & ventillation does mean there could be a need to visit the premises and be in various parts of the building whilst in use. In fact, if one company employee tended to be a regular visitor, this is exactly what the school need to consider carefully. One option is to always be escorted (by caretaker probably), there may also be a case for asking for such staff to have CRB checks (not feasible for most contractual situations - but segregation exists). Ask for a meeting to discuss - at the very least they should provide their Safeguarding policy which you can then work up a method statement from. Their H&S adviser could be of help (or not!) see last para. The guidance on safeguarding suggests it is inappropriate to ask for CRB checks unless there will be sustained, frequent and unsupervised contact with children. So to ask building contractors for this is silly. However the regular routine plumber on site may come into that category. This is the usual over-the-top nonsense from schools /procurement. Find out what kind of school management applies - is it a 'council' run school (council are the employer) or what is called voluntarily controlled ie. the 'employer' is NOT the council but the board of governors. This may help in dealing with the school, and if it is Council managed - shame on them. Locally managed - maybe they are not very experienced in how to engage contractors.

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I agree with Rich777 for the most part. However, if you have employees going into situations where they may contact vulnerable groups then, in my opinion, you should have some policy/procedures that define how you manage that contact and provide information, training for your employees. Tony you have a pm. p48

Really? For a contractor on site for a couple of hours working in a plant room? I don't believe that was ever the intention. I understood that the system was intended to sageguard situations where adults were in a position to form relationships with children. No wonder the system is so backed up!

Para 4.23 of the DfE document Safeguarding Children and Safer Recruitment in Education covers when a CRB check may not be required. It says “visitors or contractors who come on site only to carry out emergency repairs OR (my caps) service equipment and who would not be expected to be left unsupervised on school or FE college premises”. Quite clear and precise guidance covering the question of whether a CRB check is required or not. Thus it is often the case that the school does not wish to have to provide supervision every time for every contractor, ergo they ask for a check. OTT maybe but no different from lots of commercial company approaches to such variables. However, as I said earlier, whether a CRB check is required or not is not the point of asking for a policy from a contractor. As to the suitability of the curent systems I can only say that system of vetting and barring was about to be updated at the last change of government and was one of the first things put on hold....it is still as far as I know on hold! Hey ho. P48

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