Section navigation

Home > Drivers > Applying for driver accreditation > Police checks

Police checks

We help arrange nationally coordinated criminal history checks (National Police History Check) on behalf of applicants for:

  • driver accreditation
  • relevant person (booking service provider)
  • driving instructor authority.

We submit the required information on your behalf to the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) and police agencies to check your criminal history. The results of the check are then used by us to assess your application. Applicants will be sent a copy of their police check result via post.

If you believe the information recorded on your police check is incorrect, for example, the information doesn’t relate to you or it does but it’s incorrect, you may dispute all or part of it. This can be done by contacting us within 28 days of receiving your National Police History Check results. For more information on the dispute process see Disputing your police check results.

Any application to CPVV that requires a police check may be subject to any delays with ACIC/the police check, as CPVV is unable to make any final decisions on these applications until the police check has been completed. In some cases, a police check may take several weeks to return a result. While this may be inconvenient or frustrating, the delays are always necessary to ensure that the results are correct and belong to you. Below is some further information on how ACIC conducts these police checks and why some may be delayed.

How Australian police checking works

Police checking in Australia is a partially manual, name-based process; this means some checks can take longer to process than others. When a check is submitted for processing, your name and date of birth are run against a central database to find any potential matches throughout Australia with people who have police information.

A potential match may be found if you or someone with similar name and date of birth details to yours is in the database. Should any such potential matches be found, a referral is then generated within the state or territory that holds that information. The relevant Australian police agency will then manually process the check to determine if details are a match. If the check subject is determined to be a match with the potential match, the police in each state or territory then decide what information can, or cannot, be released.

How long do police checks take?

Accredited bodies, police agencies and the ACIC work together to deliver the service, aiming to process 95 per cent of police checks within 10 business days, noting that:

  • around 70 per cent of police checks are completed in real-time with results being returned to the organisation that requested the check within minutes
  • around 30 per cent of police checks are referred to one or more police agencies for manual processing because a ‘potential match’ is found. On limited occasions, this process can take longer than 10 business days due to the complexity of the check.

A ‘potential match’ may be found if the applicant shares similar details with other individuals recorded in police systems, particularly if they have a common name. Processing of a police check in these instances can take longer. Other reasons why some checks take longer than others to process may include:

  • The check subject having old police information that requires manual collection and processing of hardcopy records
  • The relevant police agency having inaccurate or incomplete records which need to be investigated properly before the check can be finalised
  • Transferring information between the various state and territory police agencies before the information can be vetted and/or released, and
  • Workloads within each police agency.

For further information please visit ACIC’s website

Ongoing police checks

CPVV also conduct ongoing monitoring with Victoria Police on a weekly basis, which provides information relating to pending charges and findings of guilt in the state of Victoria.