A PROPOSED charge for carrying out police checks on people working with children has been condemned by voluntary groups as a back door tax .

From April next year the Criminal Records Bureau will carry out checks on people applying for jobs which would bring them into contact with youngsters or vulnerable adults, including the elderly or disabled.

But each check, which will reveal any criminal convictions, will carry a £10 charge, raising fears it will hit voluntary groups already struggling to cover overheads.

Neil Irving, chief officer of North Yorkshire Forum for Voluntary Organisations, said the checks were not compulsory but groups could find themselves unable to get insurance unless they were carried out on all new volunteers.

He said the charge would cost voluntary groups in the county an estimated £260,000 a year - money they could have spent on supporting their community work.

He said: "For small organisations it is going to be another couple of hundred pounds that has to be spent, over and above everything else.

"It is effectively a back-door tax on volunteering and it is money that has to be raised just to stand still."

He said they had written to MPs to encourage them to urge the Government to drop the charge and introduce a no-fee policy.

Trish Brady, organiser of the Middlesbrough Council for Voluntary Development, said some groups would find it hard to meet the charges.

She said: "There should be appropriate systems to protect vulnerable people, although these checks on their own aren't going to solve anything.

"But voluntary organisations haven't got the resources to deal with this and a lot of them will find it very onerous."

A Home Office spokeswoman said the checks were not compulsory but any organisation employing people to work with children would be expected to carry them out.

She said the charge would be introduced to make the system self-financing. "We want to ensure that the people who are going to work with children and especially vulnerable individuals don't have past criminal convictions in this area, or if they do, that they are revealed to the employer."