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E-mail: [Home Office request email] Website: www.homeoffice.gov.uk

[FOI #8160 email]

Mr John Brown

Reference: T3362/9

Dear Mr Brown,

Thank you for your e-mail of 22 February in which you clarified your original FOI Act request made on 16 February. In your original request you asked five questions:

(a) electronic copies of any correspondence relating to the establishment of the ACRO 'service';

(b) were Ministers consulted on the creation of the ACRO?

(c) what Home Office approval has been granted for the for the use of PNC data by ACRO?

(d) why is the "Police Certificate" service provided by ACRO not being delivered by the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB)?

(e) was the CRB consulted on the decision to allow ACPO to set up this service and if so what was their response?

In your clarification you clarified that the term ACRO “service” was intended by you to mean the “establishment”, by ACPO of the ACPO Criminal Records Office (ACRO) which is offering Police Certificates for individuals seeking to live or to work in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Your request has been treated under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Home Office does not hold any information on the creation of the ACPO Criminal Record Office (ACRO). ACRO was created following an agreement by the ACPO Cabinet and not the Home Office. Once ACPO Cabinet had agreed to ACRO's creation the ACPO Council then agreed that all 43 forces would fund ACRO. Ministers were not consulted on the setting up of ACRO as it was set up by ACPO itself, as opposed to being a creation of the Home Office, or indeed any other part of Government.

When set up ACRO's purpose was to fill a gap in the ability of the police service overall to resource a range of police activities particularly the need to provide operational support and guidance to all police forces in England and Wales on matters relating to police records on the PNC and the linkages between such records, DNA and fingerprint information.

Your third questions concerned “permission” given by the Home Office for ACRO to use PNC data. Each force Chief Constable owns the information they put onto PNC for their force area. ACPO as a body represents all 44 individual forces in England & Wales and Northern Ireland, and therefore is the representative owner of all PNC records. The National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) manages the PNC equipment and makes this information available, but does not own the actual data. ACRO, as part of ACPO can, and does, have access to all PNC records for the policing work that it provides to forces and other agencies. Its Police Certificates business is charged in a similar manner to other agencies that use PNC data for vetting purposes. This was done to ensure no unfair advantage was provided to any one agency or department.

The Criminal Records Bureau was set up under Part V of the Police Act 1997. This defined its role as the provision of criminal record certificates for individuals seeking employment in the United Kingdom. This remains the CRB's purpose. The CRB was not consulted on the setting up of the ACRO Police Certificates service.

Yours sincerely

Robert Butlin