On 1 September 2026, the rules change, and the group affected is volunteers. Until then, someone teaching, instructing, caring for or supervising children is outside regulated activity if a person already in regulated activity supervises them properly. From 1 September, that exemption goes. The Crime and Policing Act 2026 removes it from the definition, and the DBS names charities, youth groups and community groups among those affected.
Two thresholds decide it. The work has to happen on more than three days in any 30-day period, or once overnight between 2 am and 6 am. Below that, nothing changes. Above it, a supervised volunteer who sat outside regulated activity is now inside it, and an enhanced check with children’s barred list information becomes available where it was not before.
Nothing changes for adults. The definition of regulated activity with adults is untouched.
What follows is the framework and the questions a board answers. It is not an eligibility ruling for any particular role – that depends on what a person does, how often, and with whom, and the DBS eligibility tool is where the determination gets made. If your safeguarding policy has not been looked at in a while, what a safeguarding policy must cover is the companion piece to this one.
What regulated activity actually decides
Regulated activity is work a barred person must not do. A barred person who applies for it commits an offence, and so does anyone who lets them do it. Both carry up to five years’ imprisonment or a fine.
That is what the definition is for. Not paperwork – a criminal prohibition with a line drawn round it.
It also brings a duty most small charities have never heard of. An organisation with any role meeting the definition is a regulated activity provider, and a regulated activity provider has a legal duty to refer to the DBS where it believes someone has caused harm or poses a risk of harm. Refusing to supply information the DBS asks for can attract a fine.
So the September change is not an administrative one. A group of volunteers moves inside a prohibition, and the charities they volunteer for may become regulated activity providers for the first time.
What changes on 1 September
Before the change: a volunteer running a weekly children’s session, supervised by a member of staff who is themselves in regulated activity, is not in regulated activity. The charity can ask for an enhanced check, but no barred list check is available for that role.
After the change: the same volunteer, the same session, the same supervision. Now in regulated activity and eligible for an enhanced check with children’s barred list information.
The frequency test does the work. A volunteer helping once a month does not meet it and is unaffected. A volunteer at a twice-weekly music club does. An assistant coach at a Saturday session that also runs midweek does. A residential weekend brings in the overnight limb on its own.
One thing that catches boards out. An existing enhanced certificate without barred list information does not become a barred list check because the law changed. It is a different check, and it has to be applied for.
The DBS asks organisations to do five things before September. Identify the roles where someone teaches, trains, instructs, cares for or supervises children under someone else’s supervision. Check whether the activity happens often enough or overnight. Check what the person’s existing certificate covered. Decide whether a new enhanced check with barred list information is needed. Update recruitment and volunteering procedures, so they reflect the new position.
Worth knowing while you do that: the DBS’s own charity sector leaflet was last updated on 23 April 2026 and still describes the supervision exemption as current. Reading it today gives you the pre-September answer. Use the news guidance and the eligibility tool instead.
Twelve days is not long to work out which of your volunteer roles moved. If you want a second pair of eyes on the assessment before the change lands, book a call, and we can go through the roles and what the board needs to record.
The four levels, and who can ask for what
A basic check shows unspent convictions. Anyone can apply for their own, for any purpose, with no eligibility criteria to meet.
A standard check shows spent and unspent convictions, cautions, reprimands and warnings, for roles the law specifies. No barred list.
An enhanced check adds any information a police force reasonably considers relevant.
An enhanced check with barred list information is available only for regulated activity.
The constraint underneath all four is easy to miss. The law does not say when a standard or enhanced check must be done. It says when one can be applied for. Your charity’s own policy decides whether to require a check, but that policy has to sit inside what the law permits, and it cannot reach above the level a role is eligible for.
There is a second limit boards trip over. Standard and enhanced checks should be applied for where the qualifying activity is part of someone’s everyday responsibilities – not because they might do that work one day, and not in case an emergency puts them in the room.
Trustees, where the rule is stranger than people expect
Being a trustee is not a regulated activity. Trustee positions were removed from the definition in 2012.
What remains is an asymmetry that almost no sector guidance states correctly. Any trustee of a children’s charity can be asked to apply for an enhanced check on the child workforce – but for the trustee role there is no children’s barred list eligibility. A trustee of a charity working with adults at risk can be asked for an enhanced check with the adults’ barred list. Same person, same board, and the answer turns on who the charity serves.
The definition of a children’s charity here is wider than it sounds. For DBS purposes, a charity is a children’s charity if any of its workers or volunteers carry out regulated activity with children. Not if its objects mention children. If one youth worker qualifies, the charity qualifies, and every trustee becomes eligible for an enhanced check.
A trustee who also does frontline work is assessed on that work separately. Where both apply, both roles go in the position applied for field. The trustee role itself carries duties that have nothing to do with DBS, and a check is not a substitute for any of them.
Basic checks are available for any trustee at any charity. For a lot of boards, that is the honest answer to what they were reaching for – a proportionate assurance step, not an eligibility claim they cannot support.
Two rules that catch charity shops and helplines
Age changes the answer in a way that feels backwards. Where someone supervises or trains a child aged 16 or 17 who is in paid or unpaid work, that is not regulated activity, and no standard or enhanced check is available. Where the child is under 16 and in employment, the same supervision is regulated activity if the frequency test is met.
A charity shop worker training a 15-year-old on a Duke of Edinburgh placement two days a week is in regulated activity. The same worker training a 17-year-old two days a week is eligible for a basic check and nothing more. Other shop staff working alongside either of them are eligible for a basic check only.
Helplines work on who the service is for. A helpline set up wholly or mainly for children, where handlers give advice on emotional, physical or educational wellbeing often enough, is regulated activity. A general public helpline that children sometimes ring is not, and its volunteers are eligible for a basic check.
Fundraising, on its own, gives no eligibility for a standard or enhanced check. Nor does driving, unless the vehicle is being used only to carry children as part of a formal arrangement rather than a favour between neighbours.
What the board writes down
The certificate is not the record. The decision is.
For each role: what the person does, how often, whether that meets the definition, what level the role is eligible for, and the reasoning. Where a role does not qualify, the assessment is the evidence that the board considered it rather than overlooked it. That is the same discipline that applies to any decision a board might have to explain later.
Renewal is a policy choice, not a legal one. DBS certificates have no expiry date. Whatever cycle you use, the policy should state it, because otherwise renewal depends on somebody remembering.
Two policies attach to the act of checking rather than to safeguarding as a subject. If you ask about criminal records, you need a policy setting out your lawful basis for processing that data. If you use DBS information, you need a policy on the recruitment of ex-offenders to comply with the DBS Code of Practice. Both sit in the wider set covered in charity policies.
And the safeguarding risks that sit behind all of this belong on the risk register, which is where the board reviews them rather than leaving them in a document nobody opens. What the Commission expects on a risk register sets out the rest.
What a certificate does not tell you
A clear certificate says nothing has been recorded. It does not say the person is suitable, and it says nothing at all about anyone who has never been caught.
References that get taken up rather than filed. An interview that asks about safeguarding directly. A probationary period for new volunteers. Supervision that carries on after the check – which the September change makes more rather than less relevant, because a role moving into regulated activity does not stop needing oversight once the certificate arrives.
The referral duty runs the other way too. If someone is removed from a role because of harm they caused or might cause – dismissed, redeployed, or allowed to resign – the duty to refer to the DBS is engaged. A resignation accepted quietly is the most common way that duty gets missed, and it may also be a matter for serious incident reporting.
The question to put to your board
Not how many certificates the charity holds. Which roles were assessed, on what basis, and when the assessment was last looked at.
A board that can answer that will find the September change is a review of what it already knows. A board that cannot has twelve days and a list to build.
If the wider picture needs work rather than the checks themselves, governance support is where that starts.
