Nanny CRB check - how long does it take?

[goldenoldie]

Spoke to my local (London) SureStart Approval centre today. Woman told me it usually takes 4 - 6 weeks to get a CRB check done for nanny.

But, this contradicts what they told a friend last week, - that it takes about 10 weeks!

Which is correct?

He hem.... Have I ever mentioned that these vouchers are more trouble than they are worth? And that they do more to give the government credit for helping us when in fact they haven't done squat.....

I couldn't resist. I'm leaving now...

Jura- no, we had no delay between CRB and CAS letter. But I was ringing CAS and badgering a lot. Hope it gets sorted very soon.

Uwila - I generally agree with your posts, but disagree re: vouchers being 'more trouble than they're worth'. Our vouchers save us £2000 per year which (although there have been hassles getting nanny's CAS etc) is def. worth the hassle to us.

Vouchers have been a bloody pain. They have lost anny's application twice, and took 2 weeks to send back one lot of vouchers she did not sign.

Now they are asking for a surestart approval form and not just the registration number. Accor are hopeless......................

We must have been lucky then - Accor and Busy Bees both wanted a copy of the letter from Surestart which has the Approval number on it (and confused nanny by calling it her 'certificate' - it's just a letter)...but Accor have been ok ( just one phone call asking for the CAS letter - which wasn't mentioned on the application form), and Busy Bees have been great ( our vouchers had the wrong name on them and they talked nanny through the whole process) - Both put the money in her account PDQ after the CAS letter was faxed.
Still think hassle is worth 2 grand - but maybe I'm a tightarse

It's not that £1000 (or £2000) a year wouldn't bring joy to my life. But, I don't understand why the journey to obtaining this has sooooo much hassle. And why do we need to take a salary sacrifice to get this? Why do we need to pay money to get our nannies into the scheme... and so on. Seems an awful lot of unnecessary expense and hassle to me. Why not just give me a tax break when I hire my childcare (no matter what that is -- childminder, nusery, nanny, etc.) That's my gripe.

No wonder people prefer tax evasion. So much easier just to give nanny cash. (not that I do this, but I'm sure many people do)

Def. agree with you there Uwila - would prefer childcare to be deducted from my gross salary rather than net!
And would be nicer if the nanny approval scheme was faster! (We used our vouchers at a nursery before we employed nanny and that was quite straightfoward, it's this approval business that is the pain).

Oh for tax-free childcare

Just filled in the form to re-register on the CCA scheme... wonder how long it will take this time. Wonder if approval time will get faster once CCA is taken over by Ofsted.

Let us know how long it takes Nannynick - Last time I read the site it said to leave 16 weeks for renewal