When Does a Criminal Conviction Become Spent?

A conviction becomes spent once a fixed waiting period has passed — and for a prison sentence that period only starts the day your whole sentence ends, licence included. Some sentences never become spent at all.

This is one of the most misunderstood areas of criminal law, and getting it wrong has real consequences. Here is how it actually works in England and Wales.

What "spent" actually means

The rules come from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. Under section 4 of that Act, once your conviction is spent you are treated in law as if you had not committed the offence, had not been charged with it, prosecuted for it, convicted of it or sentenced for it.

In practice that gives you three things:

• If someone asks you outside a courtroom whether you have any previous convictions — an employer, a landlord, a letting agent — the question is treated as not covering spent convictions. You can answer on that basis, and you cannot be penalised for not mentioning it.
• Any legal or contractual duty to disclose convictions does not extend to spent ones.
• A spent conviction, or a failure to disclose one, is not a proper ground for dismissing you, or for refusing you a job, office, profession or occupation.

That protection is real. It is not absolute. The Act allows the government to make exceptions by order, and it does — which is why certain jobs still see spent convictions. More on that further down.

When the clock starts

This is the part people get wrong most often.

For a prison sentence, the rehabilitation period starts the day the sentence is completed in full. That includes the licence period — the part of the sentence you serve in the community under supervision. It is not the day you walked out of the gate.

So if you were sentenced to four years, served two in custody and spent the other two on licence, the clock does not start until the end of the full four years. The waiting period runs from there.

Other sentences work differently:

• Fines: the period runs from the date of conviction.
• Compensation orders: from the date the money is paid in full.
• Community orders and similar orders with an end date: the rehabilitation period ends on the last day the order has effect.
• Absolute discharge: no waiting period at all.

The waiting periods

These are set out in section 5 of the 1974 Act, as amended.

If you were 18 or over when convicted

• Custodial sentence of 1 year or less — 12 months after the sentence ends
• Over 1 year, up to and including 4 years — 4 years after the sentence ends
• Over 4 years — 7 years after the sentence ends, unless the sentence is excluded altogether (see below)
• Fine — 12 months from the date of conviction
• Community order or similar — ends with the order

If you were under 18 when convicted

• Custodial sentence of 1 year or less — 6 months
• Over 1 year, up to and including 4 years — 2 years
• Over 4 years — 42 months (three and a half years)
• Fine — 6 months from the date of conviction

More than one sentence

If you were given consecutive sentences, they count as one single term for this purpose. Concurrent sentences imposed in the same proceedings also count as one term.

That matters more than it sounds. Two consecutive eight-month sentences are treated as a sixteen-month term. That moves you out of the "1 year or less" band and into the "over 1 year" band — a four-year wait instead of twelve months.

Sentences that never become spent

Section 5 excludes some sentences from rehabilitation entirely. These stay unspent for life:

• life imprisonment
• custody for life, and detention during His Majesty's pleasure or for life
• imprisonment or detention for public protection (IPP and DPP sentences)
• certain extended sentences
• preventive detention
• certain long custodial sentences — over four years — for offences listed in Schedule 18 (serious violent, sexual and terrorism offences)

That last point is worth reading twice. A sentence of more than four years is not automatically excluded. If the offence is not a Schedule 18 offence, the seven-year period applies and the conviction does eventually become spent. If it is a Schedule 18 offence, it never does.

Plenty of people assume a sentence over four years means a conviction for life. For some offences that is correct. For others it is not. It is worth having checked rather than assumed.

Spent does not mean invisible

A basic DBS check — the one you can apply for yourself, currently £20 — shows only convictions that are not spent. Once a conviction is spent, it comes off a basic check.

Standard and enhanced checks are a different matter. They can show spent convictions, unless the conviction is "filtered" out. Under the filtering rules currently in force, for someone aged 18 or over at the time:

• cautions are no longer disclosed once 6 years have passed
• convictions are no longer disclosed once 11 years have passed
• but convictions and cautions for "specified offences" — a list set by Parliament, covering serious violent and sexual offences — are always disclosed, however long ago they were

And one rule overrides all of that. Every conviction that resulted in a custodial sentence, whether or not it was suspended, is always disclosed on a standard or enhanced check. Time does not remove it. A suspended sentence counts.

For someone who was under 18 at the time, youth cautions, warnings and reprimands are not disclosed automatically — youth conditional cautions are the exception — and non-specified convictions drop off after 5 years and 6 months.

Since November 2020, each conviction is assessed on its own. The old rule, where having more than one conviction meant all of them were disclosed, no longer applies.

What this means for you

• Count from the end of your whole sentence, licence included — not your release date. People regularly tell employers in good faith that a conviction is spent a year or two before it is.
• Check whether consecutive or concurrent sentences push you into a higher band. It is a common and expensive mistake.
• If your sentence was over four years, find out whether the offence is in Schedule 18 before you accept that the conviction is permanent.
• For most ordinary jobs, once it is spent you do not have to mention it — and you cannot lawfully be dismissed for not mentioning it.
• For work with children or vulnerable adults, and other roles needing a standard or enhanced check, assume a custodial sentence will appear. Decide in advance what you want to say about it, rather than hoping it will not come up.
• If you were refused a job because of a spent conviction you had no duty to disclose, that refusal may not have been lawful.

None of this depends on anybody's goodwill. These are statutory periods. They run whether or not anyone tells you about them.

Getting it checked

Case Review UK provides independent written assessments of criminal cases by senior UK lawyers and barristers, at the pre-trial, post-sentence and post-appeal stages. Fixed fee, no hourly billing. You send the documents securely and you get a written report in 7 to 14 days that says honestly what the paperwork shows, independent of the police, the CPS and the court that dealt with the case. If the question is how a sentence has been calculated and when it actually ends, our Release Date and Probation Address Review is the place to start, and our family page explains how a relative can instruct a review on someone's behalf.

WhatsApp: +44 7417 361696
Email: enquiries@casereviewuk.co.uk

This article is general information about the law in England and Wales. It is not legal advice on any individual case, and a case review is not a substitute for a solicitor.