Run a Police Check

A police check is different from the register look-ups elsewhere in Oho. Rather than looking up a card the worker already holds, Oho submits and obtains the check on your behalf through an accredited provider — like National Crime Check (NCC) — and tracks it through to a decision.

What you'll end up with

A submitted police check you can watch from Pending through to a result, with the full consent and decision trail kept on the worker's profile.

Getting started with police checks

Unlike every other credential in Oho, a police check isn't a card the worker already holds that Oho looks up — Oho lodges a new check with an accredited provider and follows it to a result. That changes what has to be in place first.

You need a police-check verification source before anything else. Until one is connected, the Worker Police Checks and Applicant Police Checks queues are read-only — there's nothing for Request new to lodge against. Getting one connected takes two parts:

1. Oho switches police checks on for your organisation. Ask your account manager or support. This is separate from your plan tier and from having the menu item.
2. You connect your own provider account. For National Crime Check that's connect your NCC account — you'll need an NCC account you can sign in to and the Site ID of the co-branded site your checks should run under. The checks are lodged against your account, so the results and the billing stay with you.

Two routes produce a police check. Both land in the same queues and are tracked the same way:

Route	Who it's for	Where
Request new on a police check queue	Someone already on your books	Continuous → Worker Police Checks, or Recruit → Applicant Police Checks
Inside a recruitment check	A candidate you're screening	The candidate starts a new check, or uploads one they already hold

Who pays is set on the source, not per check. When you add the NCC source you choose either the organisation (billed to your NCC invoice site, which is why the Invoice Site ID is required) or the applicant, who pays NCC directly on their page. Every check lodged through that source follows that choice, and the field is read-only on the request form. To offer both, set up two sources — see Organisation pays and applicant pays.

What a check costs

The price per check is part of your agreement with Oho, not something set in the app, so it isn't published here. Ask your account manager — and ask specifically about the applicant-pays option if you're weighing the two, because the person being checked pays NCC directly in that case.

Who can do this

Requesting a check needs Manager, Admin or Super Admin — the same people who send recruitment and fetch requests. They can also record the decision on a result. Observers see both queues and every check on them, but can't lodge one.

Who	Can request a new check	Can see the queues and record a decision
Super Admin	✓	✓
Admin	✓	✓
Manager	✓	✓
Observer	—	View only

Everyone above is scoped to the organisations they've been assigned, so they can only lodge a check for someone in those — Roles & access covers how that scoping works. Connecting the provider account the check is lodged with is a separate job, and that one is Super Admin only.

To change someone's role, a Super Admin opens Settings (the gear icon) → Access → Users & Groups and picks the new role from the Role dropdown on their row — see Manage your users.

Managers used to be unable to lodge a check

Until recently Request new opened for a Manager but its Verification source list came up empty, so Request never became clickable. That was a defect, not a deliberate restriction, and it's fixed — a Manager needs no role change to request a check now.

Before you start

• A police-check verification source connected, so Oho knows which provider account to lodge with. If you don't have one yet, add a verification source first — or, for National Crime Check, follow connect your NCC account.
• The worker's work email — the provider emails them a link to verify their identity.

Oho keeps worker police checks and applicant police checks in separate queues, so a check run for an engaged worker stays distinct from one run during recruitment. This guide runs a worker check.

Step 1: Open Worker Police Checks

In the left menu under Continuous, click Worker Police Checks. The four stat cards across the top show your pipeline by stage — Total, Awaiting Review (your action needed), In Flight (with the provider), and Completed. Click any card to filter the list below to that stage.

Step 2: Click Request new

Click Request new to open the request form.

Step 3: Choose the worker

In the Worker field, start typing their name and pick them from the results.

Step 4: Choose the source and reason

1. Verification source — pick the provider account to lodge with (for example, your National Crime Check (NCC) source). These are configured under Admin → Verification Sources. If you run one source where the organisation pays and another where the applicant pays, pick by name; the read-only Who pays field confirms which you've got.

2. Reason Type (required) — why the check is being run. It starts on Employment and is sent to the provider with the check. There are eight options:

   Purpose	Standard	Health variant
   Employment	Employment	Employment (Health)
   Volunteering	Volunteer	Volunteer (Health)
   Work experience	Work Experience	Work Experience (Health)
   Accreditation	Accreditation	—
   Anything else	Other	—

   You can't change the Reason Type after you submit. To run the check under a different one, request a new check.

What the Reason Type changes

On an NCC source, the option you pick is sent to NCC as the check's category, health variants included.

On a PharmacyID source, PharmacyID only tells volunteer checks apart from paid ones. Volunteer is sent as a volunteer check. Every other option, including Volunteer (Health), is sent as a paid-employment check, so for a volunteer on a PharmacyID source pick Volunteer.

Which category a role needs, and what criminal history each category can release, is set by the provider and the national police checking rules, not by Oho. Ask your provider if you're not sure which to pick for a role.

Step 5: Add workplace details and submit

1. Purpose (role / position) (required): the worker's job title and the setting they work in, for example "Registered Nurse in aged care" or "Youth Worker working with children in community settings". Use at least three words. Oho won't accept a generic answer such as Employment, Volunteer or Retired on its own, because the provider would hold the check while it asks the applicant what the job is.
2. Workplace state and Workplace location (optional).
3. Notes (optional): kept on the check in Oho and not sent to the provider.

Then click Request. Oho shows the role back to you and asks you to confirm it before the check is sent. The What happens after submit panel names the role, the person and the email the provider will use, so you can check them before you submit.

Where the Purpose goes

Purpose is sent to the provider as part of the application. On an NCC source it's the check's reason; on a PharmacyID source it's the position, alongside your source's industry and the workplace state and location. Oho doesn't shorten it, so a full description of the role is fine.

The police use the stated role to decide which records are relevant to release. Oho doesn't decide what a check discloses: the provider and the national police checking rules do. If you're not sure how to describe a role so the check covers what you need, ask your provider.

The worker is emailed a secure link and completes their identity verification on the provider's hosted page. Results usually come back within minutes, though some providers take a little longer.

Read the result

Every check resolves to one of a few outcomes, shown with a colour so it's easy to scan:

Status (as shown in the app)	Colour	What it means
May engage	Green	Valid and current — the person is cleared for the work.
May not engage	Red	Not valid — expired, suspended, not found, or a match on a ban register.
Under review	Yellow	No decision yet — someone has to read the result and record one. Not a softer kind of pass: the worker counts as non-compliant until they do.
In progress	Blue	Still being checked.
Couldn't verify	Grey	The source couldn't be reached; Oho will try again.

Validity and expiry are tracked separately from that verdict, and the badge always shows the most serious state on record — so these appear instead of one of the five above:

Status (as shown in the app)	Colour	What it means
Expiring soon	Yellow	Still valid, but inside your expiry lead time — 30 days by default. Time to get the renewal moving.
Expired	Red	The expiry date has passed, so the worker is no longer covered.
Conditions to review	Yellow	The register attached a condition or a notation that someone has to read and decide on.
Pending decision	Blue	The issuing authority has yet to decide on an application.

A problem the register reports outright — the clearance revoked, no matching record, a newer card superseding this one — shows under its own name in red or grey, alongside the same statusDetail value. Every one of them is listed in what a check result means.

Of the verdicts, May not engage and Under review are the two that need you; In progress and Couldn't verify resolve on their own, and May engage needs nothing. Expiring soon and Expired outrank the verdict once a check has a result and a date on it. Core Entities has the same tables with the API value behind each badge.

Click any row to open the check's detail page — the full audit trail of consent records, provider callbacks, decision history, and the issued certificate when complete. Oho keeps watching afterwards and updates the outcome automatically if the status changes.

Screening an applicant instead of a worker?

Use Applicant Police Checks — see Applicant police checks below.

Chasing a slow result

Refresh on the queue polls the provider for status changes on existing checks. The Awaiting Review card filters to the checks that need a decision from you. If a check isn't moving at all, see Common questions — a check that never reached the provider looks the same as a slow one until you check for its NCC ID.

Applicant police checks

Recruit → Applicant Police Checks is the same queue, the same request form and the same result pages as Worker Police Checks — the difference is who the check is tracked against. An applicant is someone you're screening who isn't engaged yet, so their check belongs to their applicant record rather than to a worker profile.

It runs through the same police-check verification source, so if worker checks are working, applicant checks are too — there's nothing extra to switch on.

What the applicant experiences is the same either way: they get an email from the provider, follow the link, and complete their identity verification on NCC's own page. Oho never collects their identity documents.

When an applicant is taken on, their screening transfers to their new worker profile — see find and manage applicants.

Common questions

How do I tell a check actually reached the provider?

Two things on the queue card, and they appear together:

• an NCC ID tag (PID Ref if the source is PharmacyID), and
• the Submitted to NCC step ticked on the lifecycle timeline.

Until those show, the check is at Requested — created in Oho, not yet accepted by the provider — and the worker hasn't been emailed, because it's the provider that emails them. The same ID appears against the check in your NCC portal; if the two don't match you're looking at different checks.

The ⟳ button on the card is the quickest confirmation. On a check that reached the provider it reports a refreshed status; on one that didn't it says "This check hasn't been submitted to the provider yet."

Request new is greyed out, or the Verification source list is empty

Two causes, and the empty picker tells you which:

• "No police-check verification sources configured" — none is connected yet, and until one is, both queues are read-only for everyone. See Getting started with police checks.
• "You don't have access to request police checks" — you're an Observer, who can read checks but not lodge them. See Who can do this.

A check is stuck on Requested with no NCC ID

That's a submission that never landed, not a slow provider — and nothing retries it on its own. Work through these in order:

1. Does the worker have a work email? The request form warns "No work email is on file" before you submit, and it's easy to click past. The provider needs it to invite them.
2. Is the source connected? Admin → Verification Sources → ⋮ → Edit on the police-check source, then the Configure Connection step. If it doesn't show as connected, click Connect.
3. Is the worker's organisation covered by that source? See Which organisations a source covers. An organisation ticked after the last authorisation has no sign-in of its own until you Reconnect, and checks for its workers are skipped in the meantime.
4. Was it raised from a fetch request or a recruitment check rather than from Request new on the queue? Those routes are the weak spot on multi-organisation setups. If a check you raise from the queue submits fine and one raised from a request doesn't, say exactly that when you contact support — it narrows the problem immediately.

The check is complete on NCC but still In progress in Oho

Oho hasn't asked NCC since the result came in. It asks each time the verification source runs, so how long that takes depends on the source's schedule.

1. Get the result now. Click Refresh at the top of the queue, or ⟳ on the check's card. Either asks the provider straight away.
2. Fix the schedule so it doesn't happen again. Go to Admin → Verification Sources, open ⋮ → Edit on the police check source and check the Verification Schedule step. A daily or weekly schedule is the usual cause. NCC can run every 5 minutes (Every minute); PharmacyID can run every half hour.

▶ Run now on the source's row in Verification Sources does the same as Refresh, for every open check on that source.

I requested it again and nothing new appeared

Requesting again from the queue always creates a new check — it isn't merged into the first one. So if the second attempt also sits at Requested with no NCC ID, nothing was deduplicated: the configuration above still isn't right. Fix that first, then request again.

The stranded checks don't clear themselves, and there's no cancel for them in the app. Ask support to remove them.

What to send support

• The check's page URL — click the row to open it and copy the address.
• The worker, the verification source, and roughly when you requested it.
• Whether it was raised from the queue, a fetch request, or a recruitment check.

Send the NCC ID only if there is one. If your source is National Crime Check, a "PID reference" is the wrong thing to be asked for — that's PharmacyID's identifier, and the two providers aren't interchangeable.

Control historical police check uploads

When a police check is part of a recruitment check or a fetch request, the candidate is asked to either start a new check or upload a police check they already hold (a historical check). You can control the historical option for your organisation under Settings → Manage → Features → Police Check Settings.

• Allow historical police check uploads — on by default. Under Allow historical uploads for, choose who can upload an existing check: Applicants (recruitment checks), Workers (fetch requests), or both. Anyone not allowed is taken straight to a new police check. Turn the toggle off to require a new check from everyone.
• Historical police check attainment date limit — off by default. Turn it on to only accept historical checks with an attainment date within a set window, for example the last 1 month. Under Apply the attainment date limit to, choose whether it applies to applicants, workers, or both.

Click Save Settings to apply the changes. They take effect straight away, including for requests that have already been sent.

What the candidate sees:

• If historical uploads aren't allowed for them, they only see the Start a new check option, with a note explaining that your organisation requires a new police check.
• If the attainment date limit applies, the form tells them the limit up front. A check dated before the cut-off is rejected with the exact cut-off date, and they're offered Start a new check instead — they can't continue with the older check.

note

These settings only apply to candidates providing a police check through a recruitment check or fetch request. Requesting a check from the police check queues, or recording an existing check on a worker's profile, isn't affected. If you don't change these settings, candidates can upload a historical check of any age, as before.

What's next

• Roles & access to check who on your team can lodge a check
• Recording a renewed police check when the new check was run outside Oho
• Understand your Compliance Overview to see the result roll up into the worker's compliance status
• Set up notifications so you're told when a check changes status