We have just found out that an employee has a criminal conviction which he did not declare on his application form when he applied to work at our company, despite being asked to do so. What are we able to do about this?


Lindsay Gibson writes:


How you can deal with this situation fairly and lawfully, will depend on whether the conviction is ‘spent’ or ‘unspent’, the type of job which the employee carries out, and the particular circumstances relating to this employee.

A conviction becomes ‘spent’, or forgotten about, after a rehabilitation period. Different rehabilitation periods apply to different offences, based on the employee’s age at the time of the conviction and type of sentence received. The shortest rehabilitation