If you live overseas (which includes Northern Ireland) or you have spent six continuous months or more outside Great Britain, you must provide evidence of a criminal record check from the relevant country or countries. The checks need to cover the five years prior to your application.
You may submit your application form before you provide us with your overseas criminal record check. This will enable us to begin processing your application sooner.
You will still need to send us evidence of a criminal record check and no decision will be made on your application until we have received this and confirmed its authenticity. If you don't provide evidence of a criminal record check as detailed below, we will cancel your application and you will lose your application fee.
You will need to follow the process below:
- Attach a note to the front of your application form to let us know that you will be sending us your criminal record check separately.
- When you have it, send your criminal record check to:
SIA OCC Processing Centre
PO Box 1293
Liverpool
L69 1AS
England
- Include a covering letter with your criminal record check, which should contain your full name, your address and your date of birth.
You must send your overseas criminal record check to us within five weeks of applying for your licence. If you are unable to do this you should write to the address above within these five weeks to explain why. If we do not receive your criminal record check or an explanation for the delay within this time, we will cancel your application and you will lose your application fee.
Please note: if you hold a licence to work in the private security industry that was issued overseas and you were required to undergo a criminal record check in order to obtain that, you may not need to repeat the criminal record check. We will take it into account as long as the checks that were made meet the SIA's requirements. This means that the checks:
- must be up-to-date and must cover the last five years, including any periods of six months or more spent outside the country issuing the licence or outside the UK;
- must cover all relevant offences;
- must include a certificate issued by the Criminal Records Bureau or the Scottish Criminal Records Office covering any periods spent in the UK
Obtaining a Criminal Records Check
If the country in which you were based is not listed in the following pages, please contact that country's embassy, High Commission or Consulate in the UK for advice. Contact details can be found at www.fco.gov.uk
In some exceptional cases official sources do not exist or if they do, are unable to supply you with a criminal record check. For example, the government administration has collapsed to a point where there are no credible official sources of information or there is a risk to your personal safety if you make contact with your country of residence. In circumstances such as these we may accept your sworn oath and a character reference from a suitable referee.
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