sharkus

Exactly, and sod's law dictates that if you get it when you enter the pool, it'll expire, and when you go to get a new one it'll take a lot longer.

DigitalGhost

Bingo. At least the UK makes getting these things fairly easy compared with most other countries I suppose. The Japanese process is truly eye watering.

Edo

Thanks guys. So ACRO check it is then. Does anyone know if they send results by post or email?

Engineer_abroad

I think it has come done now. Only took them 6 weeks for my wifes.

withabix

By post.

If you have a 'No Live Trace' for something minor (or you can't remember what you were cuffed for), you then do a Subject Access Request (SAR) for PNC records (says he who got to have a sleep in the cells in Newcastle for Drunk & Disorderly many years ago!!) and that one will come back by email as a PDF.

If there's anything more than a Police Caution on your SAR, or there is a 'Live Trace', you then have to contact the Courts Service for records.

Not sure what the process is if its something more serious that has a Court record.

christmasoompa

They are valid for 6 months, and if you've not lived in a country since the police cert was issued then it's valid indefinitely. I don't think that's too bad tbh.

Engineer_abroad

I could go on my usual rant about what I needed to do to get my Argentine one but it's probably well known by now. As we don't live there now we applied well before our ITA and even before we entered the pools

DigitalGhost

I see. So if, for example, you had a police certificate issued by the UK in 2010 but you haven't been to the UK since 2009 then that police certificate would still be valid now?

DigitalGhost

With a Japanese one you need a formal direct request from another government agency, e.g. the CIC. You then need to have your fingerprints taken at a local cop shop and present those and the request to the Japanese government or an embassy in person.

They send off the application to the National Police Agency in Tokyo who quote a 3 month turnaround time and will then send the certificate back to the embassy and not directly to you so you then need to make a second trip to the embassy to collect it.

That's all fine if you're living in a city that has a Japanese embassy in it e.g. London but if you're not then the costs and time implications mount up very, very quickly.

Engineer_abroad

Sounds very similar to Argentina except the application has to be presented to the federal police in person in Argentina. You can't just post it. Luckily I still know people there who could proxy for me but I still had to go to the consulate in Toronto to start the process.

DigitalGhost

Yeah, it's the same thing. You can't post anything yourself, it all has to be done in person. The application is sent from the applicant's nearest Embassy (e.g. London) to Tokyo and back via their diplomatic internal mail. If we have to go through this then it will mean two separate trips to London to first drop off and then collect the necessary paperwork.

christmasoompa

Yep. How to get a police certificate

JB0591

need to be careful on going the ACPO route as that is for immigration and Disclosure Scotland (now Mygov.scot) is for police clearances for employment.

when i had to provide this for work for Reliability Clearance they expected it from Disclosure Scotland.

Snowy560

You can get a very expedited service for a UK PCC. It should be here very quickly but it is very expensive.