[2025] UKUT 030 (AAC)

The case put by Mr Hugheston-Roberts was a simple one: it was accepted that the regulated activity condition was met, and it was accepted that the behaviour which the DBS found DKS to have engaged in amounted to ‘relevant conduct’, but it was not appropriate for the DBS to have made the Barring Decision for the simple reason that DKS didn’t mistreat DJ or any other resident as he is alleged to have done.

Further, the DBS acted prematurely in making the Barring Decision based on what Mr Hugheston-Roberts describes as its “desktop audit” of DKS’s employer’s investigation. He says that the DBS should have waited for the outcome of the criminal proceedings, in which the witnesses’ evidence was tested under cross-examination. Having heard the evidence and been directed by the judge on the law, the jury acquitted DKS of the sole charge on the indictment, and the Upper Tribunal should now find that the Barring Decision involved mistakes of both law and fact and DKS’s name should be removed from the Adults’ Barred List.

The DBS resisted the appeal, maintaining that it was not under any obligation to await the outcome of the criminal proceedings (which were determined according to the civil, not criminal, standard of proof), it was entitled to make the findings that it did based on the evidence before it, and the Barring Decision involved no material mistake of law or fact. Mr Wilkinson argued that, in these circumstances, the Upper Tribunal had no choice but to confirm the Barring Decision.