DBS Checks for Club Volunteers: Who Needs One, Which Level, and How to Keep Track

A DBS certificate has no official expiry date, and checks for volunteers cost nothing. Those two facts explain most of the mess in small clubs: nobody pays for a check, so nobody owns it, and nothing ever prompts anyone to look at it again.

Which volunteers need which DBS check?

Start with the question the law asks: is this person in regulated activity?

For children in England and Wales, regulated activity includes teaching, training, instructing, caring for or supervising children when it happens frequently, which means once a week or more, on four or more days in any 30-day period, or overnight between 2am and 6am. A volunteer who does this without reasonable day-to-day supervision by someone who is themselves checked needs an enhanced DBS check with a check of the children's barred list. The barred list part matters most, because it is a criminal offence for the club to let a barred person do regulated activity.

Below that sits everyone who helps regularly but under supervision: the parent who runs the warm-up while the head coach watches, the second adult on a minibus. They are eligible for an enhanced check without the barred list. The law does not force a club to ask for one, but we think every club should, because "supervised" tends to drift. The parent helper who was always next to the coach in September is running the Tuesday group alone by February.

People who help once a term, a parent selling raffle tickets at the summer gala, need nothing. Neither do under-16s, who cannot apply at all. The government's DBS eligibility tool walks through any role you are unsure about. Scotland and Northern Ireland run their own schemes through Disclosure Scotland and AccessNI.

Do volunteers have to pay for a DBS check?

No. The Disclosure and Barring Service charges no fee for standard or enhanced checks for anyone who meets its volunteer definition: unpaid apart from travel and out-of-pocket expenses, and doing the work for someone other than a close relative. A coach paid £20 a session is not a volunteer for this purpose, even if everyone at the club thinks of them as one.

Small clubs cannot submit enhanced checks directly. They go through their national governing body, a county sports partnership, a diocese or a commercial umbrella body, and some of those charge an admin fee. Ask what yours charges before the season starts, not when a new helper is waiting.

How often should a club recheck?

Every three years. That is our rule, and it is the cycle several governing bodies already use, including the FA for its grassroots volunteers.

Because the certificate itself never expires, the club has to own the date. The cheapest way to do that is the DBS Update Service, which is free for volunteers. The volunteer registers within 30 days of the certificate being issued, and from then on the club can run an online status check, with their consent, that says whether anything new has been added. That takes a minute and replaces a whole new application. Ask every new volunteer to register in the same week the certificate arrives. If they miss the 30-day window, they will need a new check to join.

A certificate from another organisation can be accepted the same way if it is at the right level and workforce (child), and the volunteer is on the Update Service. Without the Update Service, treat it as a snapshot of the day it was printed and apply for your own.

What should the club actually record?

Five things per volunteer, and no photocopies.

• Check level (enhanced, or enhanced with children's barred list)
• Certificate number and issue date
• Date the club saw it, and who saw it
• Whether the volunteer is on the Update Service, and the date of the last status check
• Recheck due date

The DBS code of practice says certificate information should be kept only as long as necessary, generally no more than six months. Once the welfare officer has seen the certificate and recorded a decision, the club has no reason to keep the paper. A drawer of scanned certificates is a data protection risk, not a safeguarding record.

Keep this list visible to the welfare officer and one other committee member, nobody else. Our guide to keeping member records covers the same principle for children's contact and medical details.

What does this look like in a real club?

Take Northfield Stingrays, a junior swimming club in Birmingham with 31 adult volunteers across poolside coaching, timekeeping and the gala team. In January the new welfare officer finds the club's DBS list is a spreadsheet last edited in 2022: 19 names, four of them people who have since left, and no recheck dates at all.

She sorts the 31 current volunteers into three groups. Eleven poolside coaches and teachers work unsupervised every week, so they need the barred list check. Eight helpers work alongside a coach and get enhanced checks without it. Twelve timekeepers and gala volunteers sit behind the blocks with parents in the stands and need nothing. She then finds that six of the eleven coaches hold certificates more than three years old, and only two of those six are on the Update Service. Two quick status checks, four new applications through Swim England, and the coaches are clear by half-term.

The real change is the rule she adds to the volunteer sign-up: nobody goes on the rota for a session without a recorded check at the right level. Our guide to running a volunteer rota shows where that rule sits.

Does a DBS check make a volunteer safe?

No, and a club that treats it that way has missed the point. A check only shows what has been recorded. It says nothing about someone who has never been caught.

That is why the check is one layer among several: references for anyone working unsupervised, a code of conduct, two adults where possible, sensible adult-to-child ratios, and a welfare officer whom children and parents know how to reach. Welfare officers we speak to often put it like this: "The check tells me who I can't have. It doesn't tell me who I can trust."

How does Bitir help clubs keep track?

In Bitir, each volunteer has a profile with role-limited visibility, so the welfare officer can hold the five-field check record where coaches and parents never see it. A recheck can sit as a dated task against the volunteer, which shows up as due rather than living in someone's memory. And because roles decide who manages each session, the coach running the register is someone the welfare officer has already cleared.

Related reading: how a Norwich youth orchestra cleared every volunteer before its summer tour, and how a Coventry table tennis club stopped running sessions under ratio.