The Child Sex Offender Disclosure Scheme will begin its national rollout following a successful pilot stage. The rollout across all of England and Wales will begin with a phased introduction to 18 forces in August. The remainder of the 43 forces will follow by March 2011.

The Home Office announced the decision yesterday (March 3) following a review of pilots held in Hampshire, Cambridgeshire, Cleveland and Warwickshire. The Home Office claims 60 children were protected from potential abuse during the 12-month trial.

The scheme allows parents or carers to request that a person who has access to their child is checked to see if they have a record of committing child sex offences. The pilots saw 585 inquiries resulting in 315 applications and 21 disclosures. Further analysis also indicated 43 additional cases resulting in other safeguarding measures being triggered by the process.

The review concludes the four forces managed the process within child protection arrangements, applicants welcomed the professionalism of police staff and practitioners did not perceive any changes with registration compliance; no registered sex offenders (RSOs) had ‘gone underground’.
The 18 new areas will undergo intensive training and communications work with RSOs.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson said: “The UK already has one of the most robust systems in the world for the management of sex offenders; the new scheme will build on this ensuring more children are kept safe. We’ve already seen that children are better protected and sex offenders more effectively managed because of this scheme, which is why we are rolling it out nationwide.”

The 18 forces are: West Midlands, Essex, Bedfordshire, Dorset, Surrey, Durham, Thames Valley, Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincolnshire, West Mercia, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Sussex, Wiltshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire and North Yorkshire.

Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill announced that the community disclosure pilot will also be rolled out in Scotland by the end of this year. The pilot has been running successfully in Tayside since September 2009.

Calls were made to extend the pilot more rapidly after Holly Fallon was raped and murdered by neighbour and friend Thomas Smith, a known sex offender. The man also murdered her mother Diane Fallon.

Fife Constabulary and Central Scotland Police have already said they are keen to have the scheme running in their areas by the autumn.

Tayside Police will continue to run its pilot until the end of May. A full evaluation will be published in August. The force said feedback from parents who have requested information has been “very positive”.

Mr MacAskill said he “fully expects the roll-out process to begin later this year and for all of Scotland to be covered in a matter of months thereafter”.

Assistant Chief Constable Iain Livingstone, from the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, added: “The Keeping Children Safe pilot in Tayside has been a positive step which adds to existing child protection measures and increases the intelligence the police have in relation to monitoring sex offenders.

“The implementation throughout Scotland will increase our ability to protect children and other vulnerable members of the community.”