Removing data online once my conviction is spent
Judith Thompson 17-09-2021
Under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, convictions become spent after a certain period of time, depending on the type of sentence received. In most cases, when a conviction is spent, the rehabilitated person is treated as if they have never committed a crime. This means that they do not need to disclose their conviction to any prospective employer and they have the right to expect privacy in respect to their conviction.
This can become problematic when historical newspaper reports continue to appear in a search of an individual’s name online.
Rehabilitation periods, and the time that it takes until a conviction is spent, differ depending on whether a person convicted was over or under 18 at the time of conviction, and the length of sentence they received.
The rehabilitation periods for sentences with additional “buffer periods” which run from the end date of the sentence are shown in the table below:
| Sentence/Disposal | Buffer period for Adults (18 and over at time of conviction or at the time the disposal is administered. This applies from the end date of the sentence (including the licence period) | Buffer period for young people (under 18 at the time of conviction or at the time the disposal is administered). This applies from the end date of the sentence (including the licence period |
| Custodial Sentence* of over 4 years, or a public protection sentence | Never spent | Never spent |
| Custodial Sentence of over 30 months (2.5 years) and up to and including 48 months (4 years) | 7 years | 3.5 years |
| Custodial Sentence of over 6 months and up to and including 30 months (2.5 years) | 4 years | 2 years |
| Custodial Sentence of 6 months or less | 2 years | 18 months |
| Community Order or Youth Rehabilitation Order** | 1 year | 6 months |
*custodial sentence includes a sentence of imprisonment, or a sentence of detention in a young offender institution.
**in relation to any community or youth rehabilitation order which has no specified end date, the rehabilitation period is 2 years from the date of conviction.
The following table sets out the rehabilitation period for sentences which do not have “buffer periods” and for which the rehabilitation period runs from the date of conviction:
| Sentence/Disposal | Buffer period for Adults (18 and over at time of conviction or at the time the disposal is administered. This applies from the end date of the sentence (including the licence period) | Buffer period for young people (under 18 at the time of conviction or at the time the disposal is administered). This applies from the end date of the sentence (including the licence period |
| Fine | 1 year | 6 months |
| Conditional discharge | Period of the order | Period of the order |
| Absolute Discharge | None | None |
| Conditional youth and youth conditional caution | 3 months or when the caution ceases to have affective earlier | 3 months |
| Simple Caution, youth conviction | Spent immediately | Spent immediately |
| Compensation Order | On date of the discharge of the order (i.e. when it is paid in full) | On date of the discharge of the order (i.e. when it has been paid in full) |
| Binding over order | Period of the order | Period of the order |
| Attendance sentence order | Period of the order | Period of the order |
| Hospital order (with or without a restriction order) | Period of the order | Period of the order |
| Referral Order | Not available for adults | Period of the order |
If your conviction is spent and there is still information about your conviction appearing online, it should be possible to have that information removed from a search of your name. We would carry out this work on a fixed fee basis, and we would agree the fee with you before any work was undertaken.
In order to make an application to a search engine for the right to be forgotten on your behalf, we would need details of your conviction and the date of sentencing, and confirmation that you are not subject to any other cautions or convictions since the date of that sentence. We would also need a list of the URLs where the information appears online, and then we will be able to provide you with a quote for our fees for making the application to Google in the first instance.
Please contact us to find out how we can help, if your conviction is spent, but there are still reports online which are affecting your reputation.
