A clean record from home only helps you here if someone can read it. Until then a visa sits still, a job offer waits and a school cannot clear you to start. A certified police certificate translation puts the whole page into English, including the line that says you have nothing recorded against you.
We get these from people applying for visas, from nurses and teachers joining a register, from carers being vetted, and from staff whose employer has asked for a check from every country they have lived in. Papers arrive from Spain, Romania, the Netherlands, Poland, France, Sri Lanka and plenty more.
Someone is checking you, and they have hit a page they cannot read. That is how nearly every one of these starts. Vetting papers move quickly through our Home Office approved translation service, and here is who sends them.
Some UKVI applications will not go forward without a record check from where you have lived.
Overseas records sent in to sit alongside a British check before work can start.
Ofsted rules and school policies that want a clean record from every country you have been in.
Registers and care homes checking staff before they can be put in front of patients.
Civil service and cleared posts, where records from several countries are read together.
Gambling, security and taxi licences, where a clean record is part of the licence itself.
A British certificate put into Spanish or another language for a visa somewhere else.
Immigration offices overseas asking for proof of a clean record before a permit is granted.
Agencies looking at every adult in a household before a child can be placed.
Three steps, and these are among the fastest jobs we do. Most record checks are a single page with a short block of text and a stamp at the bottom.
If your police force emailed you a signed file, send that rather than a photo of a printout. The signature block and the check code stay live that way, and a reader can test them.
A price comes back inside half an hour. Say whether it is UKVI, an employer, a register or an office abroad, because a few of them want wording the others never ask for.
The stamped copy lands by email in time for most upload forms. Vetting teams that keep paper on file get a signed set in the post, and we do not charge for that.
Anyone reading a record check is trained to spot something that has been tampered with. So the page has to name the person who wrote it and show how to reach them. Where an office abroad wants a seal on top, our notarised and legalised translation covers that step too.
Record checks run out faster than most papers, and employers usually ask for one right at the end, days before you are due to start. A single page is quick work here. Send it now and tell us the date you have been given.
Most record checks are short, so this is one of the cheaper things we do. What changes the figure is how many countries you are covering and how fast you need them. The numbers below are starting points.
| What affects your price | Starts from | Why it moves up or down |
|---|---|---|
| Length of the pagethe main one | £29/ page | A clean check is usually one short block of text; a record with entries on it runs far longer and takes more care |
| How many countriesin one order | lower rateper extra | Checks from two or three places are quoted as one job, so the second and third cost less than the first |
| Extra pages attachedseals and stamps | lessthan a full page | An apostille or a covering sheet holds only a few lines, so it never costs what the certificate itself does |
| Language and scriptwho is free | variesby pair | Spanish, Romanian and Polish run at our base rate; Arabic, Sinhala and Bulgarian take a named specialist |
| How soon you need itspeed | from £0normal slot | A standard slot adds nothing; a check needed before a shift starts tomorrow is moved to the front |
| Who signs it offlevel | from £75if sealed | UKVI, employers and registers take a signed and stamped copy; a seal is for checks going to an office overseas |
Papers we work on: police clearance certificate · criminal record extract · certificate of good conduct · court record statement · ACRO certificate for use abroad · overseas police report · statement of no convictions · security vetting letter · character reference from a force · apostille sheet · covering letter from a ministry · fingerprint confirmation letter
Send the certificate and a firm figure comes back the same working hour. If you are covering more than one country, the whole set is quoted together rather than one at a time.
These papers are written by police forces and courts, and they lean on set phrases that mean one thing in law and something looser in daily speech. Put the wrong word in and a clean record can read as unclear. Every check goes to someone used to that wording, from Romanian to English translation through to the pairs below.
Three real jobs from this year, names shortened. Each one had a small catch that could have held somebody up for weeks.
Vetting is the last step before a job or a place, and it is where everything tends to stall. Here is how it went for a few people. There is more customer feedback on the site.
My enhanced check needed a record from Spain and I had days to sort it. One page, back the same afternoon, and the agency cleared me on the Monday.
The school wanted a check from the Netherlands before I could go in. They knew what Ofsted expects on the page, which saved me asking anyone.
I needed my British certificate put into Spanish for a study visa. Nobody else I asked would do it that way round, and this lot did it in a day.
Mine was for a gambling licence and the wording had to be word for word. They checked the exact phrase with me before they started.
My Sri Lankan papers had a court reference on them that another firm had left out. Here it was all there, stamps included.
I had lived in three countries and needed a check from each. Quoted as one job, all three back together, and it cost less than I had budgeted.
Record checks come with their own worries, mostly about timing and exact wording. These are the ones we answer most.
Send the certificate, tell us who is checking you, and pick up a signed, stamped copy ready for UKVI, an employer or a register.
Drop us a line, walk into the office, or message us on WhatsApp — we reply within minutes during business hours, and translations begin the moment your documents land in our inbox.