Police check fees divide childcarers

Speaking at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations annual lecture in London last week, education secretary David Blunkett said, 'It is vital that parents have the peace of mind of knowing those working in the voluntary sector are suitable to work with their children. However, this should not be at the risk of putting financial strain on the voluntary sector and diverting money away from activities that benefit the community.'

The move means that pre-schools and playgroups, the Scouts and church-based Sunday schools will not have to pay for criminal records checks. It was welcomed by the Pre-school Learning Alliance, whose chief executive, Margaret Lochrie, said, 'Our view is that all those who have significant and/or unsupervised contact with children should be the subject of criminal checks.With a workforce of more than 100,000 staff and tens of thousands of voluntary helpers, pre-schools - on their shoestring budgets - would have had great difficulty in affording the proposed charges. To this end, we are pleased that ministers have agreed to waive charges for the voluntary sector.'