FOI_25-196 Employees with criminal convictions

Date of response: 18 July 2025

We have now considered your request of 29 June 2025 for the following information:

I would like to request the following data from your organisation under the Freedom of Information Act:

Question 1. How many people with criminal convictions did your organisation hire for the period of January 1st 2020 - December 31st 2024? Please provide a breakdown by year.

Question 2. Of those who were hired, what criminal offences were disclosed?

Question 3. How many people with criminal convictions did your organisation reject for employment for the period of January 1st 2020 - December 31st 2024? Please provide a breakdown by year.

Question 4. Of those who were rejected, what criminal offences were disclosed?

Our response:

Please see accompanying document, our ref: FOI_25-196 Appendix A.

Information not held - s.1(1)(a), Freedom of Information Act

On this occasion it is not possible to provide all of the requested information. In line with your rights under section 1(1)(a) of the Act to be informed whether information is held, we confirm that the University does not hold any recorded information, for the number of individual persons with declared criminal convictions which were hired, nor do we hold the requested information for the number of individuals with criminal convictions who were not employed or the criminal offences disclosed for both categories for 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 01 January 2024 to 01 July 2024.

The University does not retain criminal conviction data for staff applicants, either hired or not, for more than 12 months, therefore we do not hold the requested information prior to 01 July 2024.

We also confirm that we do not hold all of the information relating to the nature of the conviction for the nine applicants who were not employed in 2024. Some applicants did not provide further information to us, or the period for consent to retain this information has expired.