A CALL has been made for staff at schools across East Lancashire to have the most up to date form of criminal records checks.

Under government guidance staff appointed prior to March 2002 are not required to undergo the vetting, designed to identify paedophiles and other criminals.

Unions and a Labour MP said it was not a situation that should unduly worry parents as alternative systems to the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) were in place prior to 2002.

But one MP said that schools should be told to get on with checking all staff employed before 2002.

Those employed before 2002 were checked against List 99 - which contained details of those barred from working in schools.

But the issue has come to light because it was raised at Lancashire County Council's latest audit committee meeting.

Councillors said that although there was no obligation for schools to re-check' pre-2002 employees that the council should tell schools to undertake CRB checks.

It is understood that chiefs at county hall are now talking to schools about what to do about the situation. Bosses at Blackburn with Darwen Council said they would continue to follow guidance from the Department of Education and Skills and were sure their existing systems were robust for protecting children.

Leslie Ham, of the teaching union NASUWT, said: "Parents should not be unduly concerned about this as anybody who was convicted in teaching should have come to light."

Tory Nigel Evans, Ribble Valley MP, said: "If anything went wrong then people will ask questions about why these checks had not been done."

Labour's Greg Pope, Hyndburn MP, said there were 24,000 schools in England and Wales and that the CRB would not have been able to cope if every teacher had been checked in 2002 .

He said: "The important thing was to get in place a system for new teachers coming in to be checked."