Let us show you how old court reports and newspaper articles about old court matters could be removed from your online search results.
Court matters are legally allowed to be reported on in the UK. So that means anyone who’s ever been part of a criminal trial in the UK probably has publicity about it showing on a Google search of their name, even if it’s now very old and outdated news.
The newspapers are allowed to report on your name, partial address (no house numbers or postcode, but every other part of your address can be published), everything that was said during the trial, and of course the verdicts and the sentencing.
This leaves an indelible record on display publicly to anyone who Googles your name – and it’s common now for HR teams to Google before interviews, for people using dating apps to check you out on Google beforehand, and of course for Clients of your company to Google you too.
So does court news have to stay online forever, or do you have options for removals?
I’ve had the Charges Dropped / an Investigation Ended with no Charges – can the news articles about my arrest be removed Online?
Even if you’ve been under investigation and had no charges filed, or had charges filed that were later dropped, there’s likely to still be a record online.
Because you have not been subject to a criminal trial, you are highly likely to be able to remove all traces of this matter from your online search engine results pages (SERP).
Under our GDPR – data protection UK – laws, the major UK search engines (that’s Google, Bing, and Yahoo in the UK) will agree to stop showing certain links from your search results under certain conditions.
For example, if there are reports about you having been arrested, being under investigation, or even being in court for the beginning of a trial, then if you eventually have all the charges against you dropped we’ll be able to argue your case with the search engines that all the previous published information is inaccurate, misleading, and excessive to your search results – and on the balance of probability (just over a 95% success rate for this year so far), the search engines will agree with us and stop showing the links/images/videos as per our request.
I was Acquitted/received a Not Guilty Verdict at a trial – can the news articles be removed Online?
If you’re acquitted of charges, (found not guilty), then after the trial concludes you are free to move on with your life.
That includes having the right to have most, or even all, of the court reports, articles, or news reports about the trial removed from your online SERP, thus allowing you that freedom to move on with your life.
I was Convicted / Found Guilty in Court – can the news reports be removed Online?
Even if you’ve been convicted, then after a certain period of time you’re able to freely move on and no longer discuss/declare the old sentence (except in the case of really long sentences, which we’ll discuss later in this article).
Too often, people don’t realise this fact, and carry around with the weight of these old court matters being publicly available for far too long.
It can cause issues in work or with finding new jobs, and sadly we see a recurring theme of people contacting us after they’ve had people maliciously circulate the information to contacts, employers, family, friends etc.
If you don’t have to live with this old information out there forever, then why should you?
When Can old court matters/news be removed Online?
Under the terms of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, once your sentence is spent (screenshot below), then legally, all traces can be removed.
This, of course, includes it being removed from your UK criminal records basic checks, as once it’s spent, it’s no longer declarable (when applying for jobs and similar) under UK Law.
To see if your basic DBS check is clear, and if you could therefore have the information about your previous criminal conviction removed Online, fill out a request for yourself at the Government’s DBS Check page on their website.
As you can see from the chart above, if your sentence was for more than 4 years it will never be a spent sentence, meaning you’ll always have to declare it when asked about previous convictions and that your DBS will never become clear, as this offence will always show on it.
That means that, sadly, the search engines are highly unlikely to agree to remove records relating to these longer sentences. One of the first proofs they ask us to provide as an agency is a copy of our Clients ‘recent, clean, DBS check’ – and of course, in the case of a sentence that is never spent, we’ll be able to provide a copy DBS but the offence will still show.
So that leaves the search engines usually rejecting the request to remove unspent sentences, citing public interest to remain. I think there’d be a potential for us to make an argument many years after the sentencing and court reports, depending on the seriousness of the offence and if there was any history of re-offending, but for the most part we usually tell Clients in this instance that they’re better off looking at suppression of the content rather than attempting removal.
My Conviction is Spent, so can you help me remove it Online?
In all probability, the answer to that question is yes. Once it’s spent then legally you’re free to move on with your life, and it would be our pleasure to help you do that.
For a quick, easy, no-obligation quote just Call us or Email us at: [email protected] quoting this article and making sure to include your contact details so we can get in touch to discuss it all with you.
