Levels of check
What shows on a DBS check, level by level
Describe one record: whether a standard or enhanced certificate would show it.
Would this record show on a standard or enhanced check?
Shown automatically on standard and enhanced
Yes
| Basic check | Only if still unspent |
| Police may add it to an enhanced | Already shown |
DBS filtering rules for certificates issued from 28 October 2023. Not legal advice.
What a DBS certificate shows depends on its level. A basic certificate lists only convictions and conditional cautions that are still unspent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. A standard certificate adds spent convictions and cautions, reprimands and final warnings, except those the filtering rules remove. Under the rules in force for certificates issued from 28 October 2023, a conviction for a specified offence or one that led to a custodial sentence always appears, as does an adult caution for a specified offence. Other adult convictions appear for 11 years, convictions received under 18 for 5.5 years and adult cautions for 6 years; cautions received under 18 never appear automatically. An enhanced certificate shows the same, plus information a local police force considers relevant, and the barred list result when the role allows it. The calculator above applies these rules to one record; it is not legal advice.
Fees and rules checked by Radif Partners · Editorial policy · How the figures are built
Each level at a glance
| Shown | Basic | Standard | Enhanced |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unspent convictions and conditional cautions | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Spent convictions not filtered | No | Yes | Yes |
| Adult cautions not filtered | No | Yes | Yes |
| Cautions, reprimands and warnings under 18 | No | No | No (police may add relevant information) |
| Relevant information held by local police | No | No | Yes, if the force decides it is relevant |
| Barred list result | No | No | If requested and the role is eligible |
The filtering rules in numbers
The DBS filtering rules decide what a standard or enhanced certificate shows from the Police National Computer. Three kinds of record are never filtered: convictions for specified offences, adult cautions for specified offences and convictions that resulted in a custodial sentence. For the rest, time decides: an adult caution for a non-specified offence appears for 6 years, an adult conviction for 11 years, a youth conviction for 5.5 years. Under the rules in force until 27 November 2020, a person with more than one conviction had all of them shown; that multiple-conviction rule has since been removed. Any conviction or caution that is still unspent also appears.
What "spent" means for a basic check
A basic certificate depends only on whether a conviction is spent. The rehabilitation period runs from the end of the sentence and depends on the sentence and on age; a simple caution is spent at once, and the GOV.UK basic check page notes that some conditional cautions disappear after three months. This site does not compute rehabilitation periods: they depend on details of the sentence that a short form cannot capture. Charities that support people with convictions publish detailed guides, and a solicitor can confirm a particular case.
Police information on enhanced checks
A chief officer can include information held locally, such as an allegation or an investigation that did not lead to a charge, when they reasonably believe it is relevant to the workforce and ought to be disclosed. That decision follows statutory guidance, and you can dispute it. Because this step is local, the wait for an enhanced check depends on the police forces involved; the waiting time page has the latest figures.
The same question in Scotland and Northern Ireland
A Level 1 disclosure in Scotland shows unspent convictions only, like a DBS basic check (mygov.scot). In Northern Ireland, nidirect says unspent convictions appear on a basic certificate, and cautions and spent and unspent convictions on standard and enhanced ones, under its own filtering rules, which the calculator on this page does not model (nidirect).