Vetting Hub, Specialist Training Courses in Screening, Vetting and Compliance
Expert training for confident hiring, identity assurance and people based risk decisions, created by Graham and Vivianne Johnson with industry experience since 2006.
- Jan 26, 2026
Why We Built Vetting Hub: 19 Years Servicing Hundreds of Companies Taught Us Training Had To Change
£40,000.
That's what a Surrey fish and chip shop owner paid in July 2025 for accepting a photocopied passport instead of checking the original document.
One mistake. One Right to Work failure. £40,000 gone.
We'd seen this exact pattern hundreds of times since 2006. Companies making devastating mistakes despite having "trained" staff.
Because here's what 19 years running vetting and screening companies taught Graham and me:
The training industry wasn't solving the problem. It was part of the problem.
About the Authors: Graham and Vivianne Johnson have been in vetting and screening since 2006, running companies that serviced hundreds of organisations across the UK whilst delivering training sessions to those clients. They launched Vetting Hub in 2025 to provide extremely cost-effective, CPD Certified courses (CPD: 10006126) that offer a unique learning experience based on nearly two decades of operational knowledge.
2006-2025: Servicing Hundreds of Companies Whilst Training Them
Let me take you back to where this started.
Graham and I launched our vetting and screening companies with one clear purpose: help organisations make better, safer hiring decisions through proper background checks.
Over the next 19 years, we serviced hundreds of companies.
Security contractors needing BS7858 compliance. Care homes navigating DBS requirements. Recruitment agencies managing Right to Work checks. Financial services firms dealing with FCA screening standards. Aviation companies handling GSAT requirements. Event companies needing BS8406 compliance.
Hundreds of clients. Thousands of screening checks processed. Nearly two decades of operational work.
And throughout those 19 years, we did something that most screening providers don't do.
We provided training sessions to the companies we serviced.
Not as a separate profit centre. As part of helping our clients succeed.
On-site training. Practical guidance based on the checks we were processing for them daily. Real scenarios. Real documents. Real consequences we were witnessing firsthand.
That dual perspective—servicing companies whilst training them—taught us something critical:
There's a massive gap between theoretical training and operational reality.
The Pattern That Repeated For 19 Years
When you service hundreds of companies over nearly two decades, you see patterns.
Not theories from compliance textbooks. Not generic guidance written by people who've never processed a screening check.
Real failures. Real penalties. Real money lost.
Here's the pattern we saw repeatedly:
Monday: Company sends someone on an £800-£1,500 training course
Tuesday: Person returns with impressive certificate and 200-page manual
Wednesday: Person files manual and gets back to work
Three months later: Company makes screening mistake that costs £12,000... or £40,000... or gets hit with enforcement action
Sound familiar?
We watched this cycle happen hundreds of times across the companies we serviced.
And here's what frustrated us most: We'd provide training sessions to fix the problems, based on our operational experience, and those sessions actually worked.
Not because we were brilliant trainers. Because we were teaching from 19 years of actually doing the work, not from slides created by professional course designers who'd never processed a screening check.
Three Real Examples From Companies We Serviced
Let me share three situations from our client work. Not fiction. Real companies we serviced. Real problems we solved.
Client 1: The Regional Care Provider (2014)
42 care facilities across the South East. Dedicated staff. Genuinely cared about residents.
They hired us because their DBS screening process was failing CQC inspections.
We audited their screening and found chaos:
Basic DBS for Enhanced-level roles
Certificates stored for eight years (should be six months maximum)
No policy on disputed disclosures
Confusion about barred list checks
Staff requesting wrong disclosure levels regularly
The kicker? Their HR manager had attended a £1,200 two-day DBS training course nine months earlier.
She had the certificate on her wall. She had the 180-page manual in her drawer. She'd passed the end-of-course assessment with 87%.
But when we asked basic questions about Enhanced DBS eligibility criteria, she couldn't answer confidently. Didn't understand workforce definitions. Wasn't sure about storage requirements or when to request barred list checks.
She'd been trained. She hadn't learned.
We provided training sessions with their team. Used actual DBS scenarios from our screening work. Showed them real disclosure certificates we'd processed. Explained the "why" behind requirements, not just the "what" from guidance documents.
Six months later: CQC inspection passed with no screening-related issues.
The difference wasn't magical. It was operational knowledge from people who'd been processing DBS checks since 2006.
Client 2: The Security Contractor (2017)
Medium-sized firm. 180 security officers. SIA-licensed. Major retail and corporate contracts.
They hired us after their previous screening provider cut corners and they were terrified of an SIA audit.
Our audit of their BS7858 screening found serious compliance gaps:
References not properly verified (phone numbers not checked, conversations not documented)
Employment gaps not investigated properly
Criminal record checks missing for some officers
No documented screening policy
Verification processes inconsistent across different sites
Their compliance manager had completed an £850 BS7858 training course six months earlier. Passed the assessment. Had the certificate.
Three weeks after we started working with them, the SIA inspector arrived.
We'd been providing intensive training sessions. Showing them our verification processes developed over 11 years servicing security companies. Walking them through exactly what SIA inspectors look for. Using real examples from our client work.
They survived the audit. Barely. No enforcement action. But it was close.
The £850 training course hadn't prepared them for a real SIA inspection. Our training sessions based on hundreds of BS7858 implementations whilst servicing security companies? That made the difference.
Client 3: The Tech Recruitment Agency (2023)
Specialist agency. High-value placements. Professional operation. Good reputation.
They hired us after internal audits revealed their Right to Work compliance wasn't as robust as management thought.
We found issues before the Home Office did. That's the good news.
The bad news: document verification was inconsistent, checking service wasn't used properly, audit trails were incomplete, and some decisions were being made that could have resulted in massive penalties.
Their compliance officer had attended a full-day Right to Work training course eleven months earlier. £495. Passed the assessment. Had the certificate.
But faced with real documents from actual candidates? She was making judgment calls that could have cost the company £45,000 per violation.
Why? The training course covered 47 different document types in two hours. Showed PowerPoint slides of documents. Explained the theory and the law.
But she'd never held a Biometric Residence Permit. Never used the Home Office checking service. Never dealt with a disputed Right to Work situation. Never seen what a fraudulent document actually looks like.
Our training sessions? We brought actual documents from our screening work. Walked through real verification scenarios we'd handled hundreds of times whilst servicing recruitment agencies. Showed them what fraud looks like based on cases we'd caught.
That's the gap between classroom training and operational experience.
The £70 Million Wake-Up Call: 2025
Fast forward to 2025.
The Home Office issued over 1,500 Right to Work penalty notices between July 2024 and March 2025.
£70 million in fines. First half of 2025 alone.
Surrey fish and chip shop: £40,000 for accepting a photocopy instead of the original.
Penalties increased in April 2025: £45,000 first offence, £60,000 repeat offences.
And here's what absolutely killed us after 19 years servicing companies:
Most businesses that got fined genuinely thought they were compliant.
They'd sent someone on a training course. They had Right to Work policies. They were doing it "right" on paper.
Then the Home Office audit happened. Failures everywhere.
We can't count how many times over the years a client called us in a panic saying: "But we sent someone on a £500 Right to Work course! How did this happen?"
The training hadn't worked.
And this wasn't just Right to Work. It was DBS. It was BS7858. It was FCA screening. It was CQC compliance. It was every single compliance area where expensive training created false confidence without genuine understanding.
The 22% Fraud Surge Nobody Talks About
Here's another pattern we saw whilst servicing companies:
Insider threats and staff fraud surged by 22% in 2023 compared to 2022, according to Cifas, the UK fraud prevention service.
One in five fraud cases committed within the first three months of employment.
We witnessed this constantly:
Someone got hired with incomplete screening. Or their screening was technically "complete" but missed red flags because the person doing it didn't understand what they were looking for. Or rescreening didn't happen and circumstances changed.
Then the fraud occurred. Or the security breach happened. Or the incident that made the news.
And when we investigated, we'd find the same thing: someone had been trained, but they hadn't genuinely understood.
The Metropolitan Police failure with regular officer checks that led to the Sarah Everard case sent shockwaves through the UK in 2024. That wasn't a training failure in isolation. That was a systemic failure to understand why ongoing screening matters.
We'd been teaching this to our clients since 2006.
Not because we read about it in a compliance manual. Because we'd seen what happens when rescreening doesn't happen properly.
What 19 Years Servicing Companies Taught Us About Training
Here's what made us different from traditional training providers:
We weren't just running courses. We were servicing companies whilst training them.
That meant several critical things:
We saw whether the training worked. Not whether someone passed an assessment. Not whether they got a certificate. Whether they could actually do the work correctly three months later, six months later, a year later.
We dealt with the consequences of failed training. Companies would hire us after expensive courses didn't prevent failures. We saw the pattern repeat across hundreds of organisations.
We trained based on real operational work. Not PowerPoint theory. Not generic compliance guidance. Actual scenarios we were handling daily whilst servicing hundreds of companies.
We followed up because we serviced clients ongoing. We couldn't deliver training and disappear. We saw the results of our training in the quality of our clients' screening processes.
That dual perspective—operational screening provider and training deliverer—revealed the fundamental problem with the training industry:
It's designed to generate revenue, not prevent failures.
Traditional training model:
Charge £800-£1,500 per person
Deliver 1-2 days of generic content
Show slides and issue impressive certificates
Move to next course
Zero follow-up or accountability
Here's the really cynical part: When training fails and companies make mistakes, the solution the industry offers is... more training. Another course. Another certificate. Another £1,000.
The training industry actually benefits from continued failures.
After 19 years watching this pattern whilst servicing hundreds of companies, Graham and I had enough.
The Decision: July 2025
July 2025. That £40,000 Right to Work penalty hit the news.
We'd been having the same conversation with clients for 19 years:
"We sent someone on training!"
"Did they understand it?"
"They got a certificate!"
"Can they apply it in real situations?"
"Well... apparently not, given this penalty notice."
Graham and I looked at each other. We were done watching this pattern repeat.
We had 19 years of operational knowledge from servicing hundreds of companies. We'd been delivering training sessions that actually worked because they were based on real screening work, not theoretical compliance frameworks.
We knew what prevented failures because we'd seen the failures. We knew what worked because we'd implemented solutions hundreds of times.
We just needed to make that knowledge accessible to everyone. Not just our clients.
So we launched Vetting Hub in 2025.
Not another expensive training company charging £1,000+ per person. A fundamentally different approach to training companies, employees and individuals.
What Makes Vetting Hub Different: Three Core Principles
Principle 1: Operational Knowledge From 19 Years Servicing Companies
Every single course we created comes directly from our experience since 2006.
When we teach BS7858 Screening Standard, we're not explaining theory from a British Standards document that we read last week.
We're showing you the verification failures we caught across hundreds of security company implementations. The employment gap investigations that revealed fraud. The reference checks that didn't check out. The SIA audit triggers we identified whilst servicing clients.
When we teach Understanding DBS Checks, we're not regurgitating government guidance.
We're answering the exact questions clients asked us for 19 years. The confusing scenarios. The edge cases. The situations that don't appear in official guidance but come up constantly in real screening work.
We teach what we learned by doing, not what we learned by reading.
That's the unique learning experience. Not flashy videos or gamified modules. Actual operational knowledge from nearly two decades servicing hundreds of companies.
Principle 2: Extremely Cost-Effective Solutions
If training costs £1,000 per person, small businesses can't afford to train their teams properly.
They either:
Don't train at all (hope for the best)
Train one person and hope knowledge spreads (it doesn't)
Choose cheap, ineffective alternatives (tick-box exercises)
All three options lead to failures.
We spent 19 years watching businesses struggle with this problem. Good companies that wanted to do things right but couldn't afford £800-£1,500 per person for training.
Our pricing model is completely different:
Vetting & Screening Standards:
BS7858 Screening Standard - £85
FCA Screening Standard - £79
PCI Screening Standard - £69
CQC Screening Standard - £79
Global Screening Standards - £69
Identity, Right to Work & Pre-Employment Risk:
Ongoing Screening, Data & People Risk:
GDPR Training - £45
You can train your entire team for what one traditional course costs one person.
This isn't charity. It's pragmatism born from 19 years watching businesses fail because they couldn't afford proper training for all staff who needed it.
Principle 3: CPD Certified + Unique Learning Experience
Here's a dirty secret about the training industry: anyone can call themselves a "training provider."
No qualifications required. No standards to meet. No accountability for whether the training actually works.
We wanted credibility that actually meant something:
✅ CPD Certified - Every Vetting Hub course is independently accredited (CPD: 10006126)
✅ Unique Learning Experience - Content based on 19 years servicing hundreds of companies, not generic compliance theory copied from government guidance
✅ Operational Foundation - Taught by people who've been in vetting and screening since 2006
When someone completes our Pre-Employment Screening & Vetting Essentials (£79), they get a CPD Certified qualification based on nearly two decades of operational knowledge.
Not just another certificate from "another training company."
The Courses We Built: Three Specialist Categories
Let me walk you through what we created and why each course exists.
These aren't theoretical courses designed by instructional designers. These are operational knowledge courses created by people who've been doing this work since 2006.
Category 1: Vetting & Screening Standards
This is where most organisations start. The compliance foundations we wish had been available when we started servicing companies in 2006.
BS7858 Screening Standard (£85)
The security industry standard. We serviced dozens of security companies over 19 years. Processed thousands of BS7858 checks. Dealt with countless SIA audits.
This course contains every verification pattern, employment gap investigation technique, and reference checking failure we identified whilst doing that work.
Not theory. Operational reality from hundreds of implementations.
BS8406 Event Steward Standard (£79)
Event security has specific requirements different from standard security screening. We worked with event companies for years whilst servicing them.
This course explains what actually matters at venues, not just what the standard says on paper.
BPSS Security Screening Standard (£69)
Government baseline standard. Looks simple on paper. Frequently misunderstood in practice.
We explain why each element matters based on hundreds of BPSS implementations whilst servicing companies that needed government clearances.
Pre-Employment Screening & Vetting Essentials (£79)
Comprehensive foundation course. Everything we learned about effective pre-employment screening from 2006-2025 whilst servicing hundreds of companies across every sector.
The questions clients asked. The mistakes we caught. The solutions that actually worked.
Creating a Screening Policy & Framework (£89)
We wrote dozens of screening policies for clients over 19 years. This course shows you how to create one that your team can actually follow and that protects you during audits.
Not a template to copy. Actual guidance on building policies that work in practice.
Sector-Specific Standards
Different sectors have different requirements. We serviced companies across all these sectors:
FCA Screening Standard (£79)
Financial services screening requirements. We serviced FCA-regulated clients for years. This course explains what actually matters for authorised firms.
CQC Screening Standard (£79)
Care sector screening. We serviced care homes and providers since 2006. This course is based on countless CQC inspections and DBS implementations.
PCI Screening Standard (£69)
Payment card industry screening requirements. Specialist knowledge from servicing companies handling card data.
Airside Screening Standard & GSAT (£79)
Aviation security screening. We serviced aviation companies. This course covers what airport employers actually need to know.
Specialist Screening Topics
Global Background Screening Awareness (£69)
For organisations with international operations. Based on cross-border screening challenges we solved whilst servicing companies with global workforces.
Global Screening Standards (£69)
International screening approaches. What we learned servicing companies operating in multiple jurisdictions.
Risk Assessment in Background Screening (£59)
How to actually assess screening risk. Not theoretical frameworks. Practical approaches we developed whilst servicing hundreds of companies.
Category 2: Identity, Right to Work & Pre-Employment Risk
This category exists because of July 2025. That £40,000 penalty. And the hundreds of similar failures we'd seen whilst servicing companies since 2006.
Right to Work Checks & Legal Requirements (£49)
The Home Office issued over 1,500 penalty notices between July 2024 and March 2025. £70 million in fines.
This course exists to stop you becoming a statistic. Based on thousands of Right to Work checks we processed whilst servicing companies.
The documents we verified. The fraud we caught. The penalties we helped clients avoid.
Understanding DBS Checks (UK) (£49)
The questions we answered every single week for 19 years whilst servicing companies:
Which disclosure level? What's eligible? How long to keep certificates? What about disputes? Barred lists? Update Service?
All of it. Based on thousands of DBS checks processed since 2006.
Digital ID & GPG45 Compliance (£59)
Identity verification is changing. Digital IDs are coming. We explain what that means in practice based on serving companies through these changes.
Fraud Awareness in Pre-Employment Screening (£59)
Insider threats surged 22% in 2023. We caught fraud constantly whilst servicing companies over 19 years.
This course shows you the patterns. The red flags. The verification techniques that actually work.
Based on real fraud we identified, not theoretical fraud scenarios.
Preventing Hiring Fraud & Identity Fraud (£59)
Prevention strategies from servicing hundreds of companies. The document fraud we caught. The identity theft we prevented. The verification failures we fixed.
Social Media in Employment Screening (£55)
Legal, ethical, effective. The three requirements we balanced in our operational work whilst servicing clients who wanted to use social media screening.
Category 3: Ongoing Screening, Data & People Risk
Screening doesn't stop at hire. We learned this whilst servicing companies for 19 years.
Continuous Employee Background Checks & Monitoring (£59)
After the Metropolitan Police failure with regular officer checks sent shockwaves through the UK in 2024, rescreening became critical.
We'd been teaching this to clients since 2006. Not because it was fashionable. Because we'd seen what happens when rescreening doesn't happen.
Sanctions, PEP & Adverse Media Screening (£65)
Financial crime screening. We serviced regulated clients for years. This course explains what actually matters versus what sounds impressive in compliance meetings.
GDPR Training (£45)
Every screening check involves personal data. Understanding GDPR isn't optional.
We had to comply with GDPR whilst servicing hundreds of companies. This course is what we learned from doing it operationally, not just reading guidance.
Data Protection Policies & Procedures (£55)
Policies we actually used whilst servicing companies. Not templates. Operational procedures that worked in practice.
Data Breach & GDPR Incident Reporting (£69)
What to do when things go wrong. Based on incident management we handled whilst servicing clients.
AI & Data Privacy in the Workplace (£69)
73% of people in the UK haven't had any AI education or training, according to a 2025 KPMG study.
AI is transforming screening. Your team needs to understand the implications. We explain what matters based on watching this technology emerge whilst servicing companies.
Understanding GDPR in the Age of AI (£79)
AI and data protection intersect constantly in modern screening. This course explains the practical implications we're seeing.
The Honest Truth About Our Courses
Let me be completely transparent about what we're offering.
Our courses won't make you an expert overnight. They won't solve every screening challenge you'll ever face. They won't guarantee you'll never make a mistake.
What they will do:
Give you operational knowledge we gained over 19 years servicing hundreds of companies
Show you the failures we witnessed and how to avoid them
Explain the "why" behind requirements, not just the "what" from guidance documents
Provide practical guidance you can apply immediately in your organisation
Offer CPD Certified qualifications (CPD: 10006126) at extremely cost-effective prices
That's the honest value proposition.
We're not claiming to be revolutionary or transformative or any other meaningless marketing language.
We're saying we've been doing this work since 2006, servicing hundreds of companies, and we're sharing what we learned.
Why We Finally Had To Build This
Back to that July 2025 conversation. The £40,000 penalty. The business that had "done everything right" by sending someone on a training course.
Graham and I had been having versions of that conversation for 19 years whilst servicing companies.
We'd seen:
Care homes fail CQC inspections after sending staff on expensive DBS courses
Security companies face SIA enforcement despite "fully trained" screening teams
Recruitment agencies hit with massive Right to Work penalties after staff attended training
Businesses repeatedly making the same mistakes despite investing thousands in "professional development"
Every failure followed the same pattern:
Someone had been trained. They had a certificate. They'd passed an assessment.
But they hadn't genuinely understood. And three months later, they made a decision that cost their organisation money, reputation, or both.
We were tired of watching it happen.
We had the knowledge to help. 19 years of operational experience servicing hundreds of companies. Thousands of screening checks processed and audited. Hundreds of training sessions delivered to our clients. Countless compliance challenges solved.
We just needed to make that knowledge accessible to companies, employees and individuals beyond just our clients.
Not at £1,000 per person. Not through generic PowerPoint presentations. Not with impressive certificates that meant nothing six months later.
But through extremely cost-effective courses that focused on genuine understanding. With CPD certification that proved legitimacy. Based on a unique learning experience from nearly two decades doing the actual work.
That's why we built Vetting Hub in 2025.
What Happens Next
This isn't a sales pitch disguised as a story.
We're not trying to convince you that our courses are "revolutionary" or "game-changing" or any other meaningless marketing language.
We're simply sharing why we built what we built.
After 19 years servicing hundreds of companies whilst training them, we saw a fundamental gap between what training claimed to deliver and what it actually achieved.
We saw businesses fail despite investing in expensive training. We saw the same mistakes repeated. We saw the traditional training model prioritise profit over preventing failures.
And we decided to do something different.
If you're facing screening challenges, you have options:
Continue with traditional training (expensive, often ineffective based on what we witnessed)
Hope your team figures it out (risky, usually expensive when it goes wrong)
Try Vetting Hub's approach (extremely cost-effective, based on 19 years servicing hundreds of companies)
We're not saying we're perfect. We're saying we spent nearly two decades watching training fail whilst servicing companies, and we built something different based on what we learned.
Visit our About page to read the full story of how we've been in vetting and screening since 2006 and why we launched Vetting Hub in 2025.
Or explore our complete course catalogue to see if our operational knowledge might help your organisation.
Training Tip: How To Evaluate Any Training Provider
After 19 years delivering training sessions to the companies we serviced, here's how we recommend evaluating any training provider (including us):
Ask these five questions:
Do they have operational experience, or just training experience?
Anyone can read guidance documents. Operational knowledge comes from actually doing the work for years.What credentials do they hold?
CPD certification isn't perfect, but it demonstrates commitment to standards. Ask for proof.Do they explain the "why" or just the "what"?
Understanding why requirements exist helps you apply them correctly in novel situations three months after training.Can you afford to train your entire team?
If only one person gets trained, knowledge doesn't spread effectively. Training should be priced to enable proper team training.Do they focus on passing assessments or preventing failures?
The goal is competence and avoiding mistakes, not just certification.
These are the questions we asked ourselves when building Vetting Hub.
The Final Word
£70 million in Right to Work fines in six months.
22% surge in insider fraud.
The Metropolitan Police rescreening failure that shocked the nation.
The screening and vetting industry is under pressure. Enforcement is increasing. Penalties are rising. Standards are tightening.
And training is more important than ever.
But only if it actually works. Only if it prevents failures rather than creating false confidence.
After 19 years servicing hundreds of companies whilst delivering training sessions to those clients, Graham and I launched Vetting Hub with one goal:
Make genuine operational knowledge accessible through extremely cost-effective, CPD Certified courses that offer a unique learning experience.
Not expensive. Not generic. Not focused on certificates over competence.
But focused on the operational knowledge from nearly two decades doing the actual work that actually prevents the failures we witnessed hundreds of times.
That's why we built what we built.
Learn more about our story or explore our CPD Certified courses starting from £45.
Further Reading:
Graham and Vivianne Johnson have been in vetting and screening since 2006, running companies that serviced hundreds of organisations. They launched Vetting Hub in 2025 to provide extremely cost-effective, CPD Certified training (CPD: 10006126) based on nearly two decades of operational knowledge.