Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) Scheme

What Is the PVG Scheme?

The Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) scheme is a Scottish government programme that helps ensure people who are unsuitable to work with children and protected adults cannot do regulated roles with these groups.

It is a legal requirement to join the PVG scheme to do a regulated role in Scotland. PVG scheme membership lasts for five years and is subject to continuous monitoring by Disclosure Scotland. Equivalent regimes operate elsewhere in the UK: the Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) in England and Wales, and AccessNI in Northern Ireland.

How Waypilot Supports Tenant Schools

Waypilot does not carry out PVG checks, decide who is suitable to teach, or employ instructors. The decision to engage a PVG-scheme-verified instructor is the responsibility of the tenant school. What the platform does is give the tenant school a structured place to record and maintain that verification.

For each instructor associated with a tenant school account, the platform can store:

• PVG scheme membership status — joined, active, expired, or withdrawn
• Membership number and the issuing body (Disclosure Scotland, DBS, or AccessNI)
• Issue date and expiry date, with the platform surfacing a warning before expiry
• Continuous monitoring status — whether the instructor is subject to ongoing monitoring by the relevant disclosure body
• The record-keeping details that the tenant school needs for their own safeguarding file

The instructor themselves, or the tenant school, enters these details onto the platform. Waypilot does not verify the accuracy of any disclosure or PVG number against Disclosure Scotland directly — that check remains the tenant school's responsibility at the point of recruitment.

Why This Matters for Driving Instruction

Driving instruction typically involves one-to-one contact and direct communication with learners. Many of those learners are young people aged 17 and above, and some are adults who may be vulnerable. That is why many driving schools — particularly those teaching under-18s or working through local authority contracts — require their instructors to be PVG members.

By giving tenant schools a single, auditable place to record PVG membership, the platform helps them to:

• See at a glance which instructors are currently verified and which memberships are coming up for renewal
• Demonstrate their own safeguarding diligence to parents, schools, and local authorities
• Reduce the chance of an expired or withdrawn PVG membership going unnoticed
• Keep an audit trail of changes to an instructor's verification status, accessible only to authorised users within the tenant school

Boundaries of the Platform's Role

It is important to be clear about what Waypilot does and does not do in this area:

• Waypilot does not require any instructor to be a PVG member. That decision is taken by the tenant school, and may depend on the learner profile, local authority contracts, and applicable law
• Waypilot does not run PVG applications, and does not see or store the content of a disclosure certificate
• Waypilot does not interpret PVG results. The decision to engage an instructor remains with the tenant school as the employer or engager of that instructor
• If Disclosure Scotland notifies a tenant school that an instructor has been listed, the tenant school is responsible for the operational response — the platform can support the record-keeping and account-restriction side of that response

Related Safeguarding Controls on the Platform

PVG status is one part of a wider safeguarding picture. The platform also supports tenant schools with:

• Secure storage of safeguarding concern records, separate from general lesson notes and visible only to authorised users
• Role-based access controls so that staff only see the learners they teach, and parent / guardian viewers only see what is appropriate for their child
• Audit logging of access to safeguarding-relevant data, with an export available to the tenant school on request
• Immediate account restrictions for instructors who are flagged, so that historical records are preserved but access is removed
• Configurable data retention rules so that PVG and safeguarding records are kept for as long as the tenant school needs, and no longer

These controls are described in full in our Safeguarding & Data Handling policy.

Reporting a Concern

If you are a learner, a parent, a guardian, or a member of the public and you have a concern about the conduct of an instructor who uses Waypilot, please raise it with the driving school that engages that instructor first — they are the employer or engager and hold the operational context.

Concerns about the platform itself — for example, a suspected data breach, a misuse of the platform's safeguarding features, or a security vulnerability — can be reported directly to Waypilot at security@waypilot.co.uk. We will respond promptly.

If a child or vulnerable adult is at immediate risk of harm, call 999. To report a concern to the police where there is no immediate danger, call 101. In Scotland, concerns about an adult at risk can also be raised with the local council's social work team.