HEALTH staff in Worcestershire have all undergone rigorous police checks, trust officials have confirmed.

It comes after a BBC Radio Five Live survey found 61 per cent of health trusts in the UK had not carried out checks on employees who have worked for them since before the Criminal Record Bureau (CRB) was established in 2002.

While both Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust and Worcestershire Primary Care Trust, admitted staff employed prior to 2002 had not been vetted by the CRB, they said police checks had been carried out.

A spokesman for the hospitals trust said: "In line with Department of Health regulations, we have had in place, for many years, police checks for staff. Police Checks were replaced in 2002 by checks with the Criminal Records Bureau and since 2002 all new staff have been subject to CRB checks.

"The CRB check is just one of the many checks we make before a person is offered employment. Routine pre-employment checks also include identity checks, occupational health checks and reference checks all of which will build a picture of the potential employee at that point of application for the job."

The spokesman said the trust recently decided to carry out the CRB check for staff working with children employed prior to 2002 and these checks will be completed this year.

They added: "It is important to stress that this was not prompted by any concerns about the staff involved, but is a measure designed to ensure that these staff are subject to similar checks to their colleagues."

Prior to 2002, access to police checks was mainly confined to organisations in the statutory sector for staff who had substantial unsupervised access' to children. The CRB enabled many more organisations to access these checks as part of good recruitment practice.

A spokesperson for the primary care trust said its staff had also been subject to police checks prior to the introduction of the CRB.

They said: "We had in place police checks for staff working with children and vulnerable adults. All new staff since 2002 have been subject to Criminal Record Bureau checks, both clinical and non-clinical. Additionally a number of other personal pre-employment checks routinely take place and have done so for many years. The monitoring of professional performance is regularly undertaken for all staff employed in the organisation."

There is currently no legal requirement for trusts to carry out checks on staff employed before the new rules came in to place leading to concerns about the numbers of people working in the NHS who had not been appropriately vetted.