My partner applied for an AO civil service job in March this year and got a conditional offer in late April. He has recently been going through pre employment checks. He was prompt and gave them all his ID documents quickly and filled in the PECs form straight away. They got in touch asking for his latest council tax letter as new ones were issued late March and he returned it within half an hour, all was well. Disclosure came through a couple of weeks after so all was still looking good. Then one day he was emailed saying 2 of his 3 references had ‘bounced’ and it asked for him to either respond with corrected reference details or alternatively, 2 new character references. He responded that evening with new references just before 7pm. The next day he was emailed first thing in the morning from the recruitment team saying offer withdrawn as PECs were unsatisfactory! We were in absolute shock since as far as we were aware it was unheard of to fail these checks unless you’re dodgy, failed disclosure or had been abroad none of which he has. He's clean! He contacted the team asking to appeal and for further information and after a week they replied saying it’s because they only got 1 reference response and the last email asking for 2 new ones was an error!
Does anyone know if this is the usual process for civil service recruitment - one shot and if any of your references don’t reply (which is out of your control) then your job offer is gone? All of his references told him they were happy to do it so he is quite upset something has gone wrong. His employer reference said he would when he was made redundant, albeit it was a while ago. It seems extremely cruel and they also emailed him saying he was enrolled in the alpha pension on the day they asked for updated reference details so we were really under the impression he was about to complete checks and get his formal offer.
He had to withdraw from 2 other AO jobs he had been applying to around the same time once he got this offer so they gave completely screwed him here!