DBS changes to the supervision exemption
From the Regional Officer for Safeguarding:
Today is the 1st Sept 2026 so I am taking the opportunity to highlight the new DBS changes to the supervision exemption for people in regulated activity. This comes into effect today.
I have set out the changes below and the action that you will need to take to be compliant with the legislation. Please share this with anyone else in your circuit who is involved in the administration of DBS checks.
DBS changes to the supervision exemption
Until 1 September 2026, any people who taught, trained, instructed, cared for or supervised children, if it was done on more than 3 days in any 30-day period or once overnight, between 2am and 6am and they were properly supervised did not require an enhanced DBS check with children’s barred list. This is because they were not in regulated activity owing to the supervision exemption.
From 1 September 2026 (now) , this supervision rule will no longer apply. Therefore, if a person teaches, trains, instructs, cares for or supervises children often enough, or overnight, they will be in regulated activity with children even if someone else supervises them.
This means for church roles we will now need to ask for an Enhanced DBS check in the child workforce with a Children’s Barred List check for all people who teach, train, instruct, care for or supervise children if it is done on more than 3 days in any 30-day period or once overnight, between 2am and 6am.
Therefore, our DBS and Training Guidance has been updated (v2 1-9-26) to reflect these changes in the DBS rules from 1 September 2026 and will replace the previous guidance on the district website with the updated guidance.
You should now replace the existing guidance with the new one. Please check the date in the top left to ensure you are using the correct guidance.
Action Required: To ensure that you have correctly checked people in church and circuit roles from 1 September 2026 please …
identify roles where people teach, train, instruct, care for, or supervise children and are currently supervised by someone else in regulated activity
check if the activity is done more than 3 days in any 30-day period or overnight
if they do the activity on more than 3 days in any 30-day period or overnight, please check if the person’s current DBS certificate includes a Children’s Barred List check (if you are not sure, please provide their details and I can check)
finally, you will also need to update recruitment, volunteering and safeguarding steps so they include the changes from 1 September 2026 for any new roles
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Best wishes
Sarah Howell
Regional Officer for Safeguarding - South East (South East) | The Connexional Team