What an ACRO Police Certificate Is — and Who Issues It
An ACRO police certificate is the United Kingdom's official criminal records disclosure for use abroad. It is issued by the ACRO Criminal Records Office, a national policing unit that manages criminal records exchange between the UK and other countries. When a foreign immigration authority asks a British applicant for a “police clearance certificate”, a “certificate of good conduct” or a “criminal record certificate”, the ACRO certificate is the document they mean.
The certificate reports what is held about you on the Police National Computer. It covers convictions, cautions, reprimands and final warnings, both spent and unspent, and it applies to the whole of the United Kingdom — England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland — rather than to a single police force area. If nothing is held, the certificate states that no trace was found. That is not a failed application or a blank result: it is the outcome most applicants receive, it is a fully valid certificate, and it is exactly what a visa officer wants to see.
💬 A note on names
There is no single agreed international term for this document, which is why so many people order the wrong one. Depending on who is asking, you may see it called a police certificate, a police clearance certificate, a PCC, a certificate of good conduct, a criminal record certificate, a subject access certificate or simply “a UK police check”. With one exception — a subject access request, which is a different and generally unacceptable product — all of these normally mean the ACRO police certificate. If a form asks for a “certificate of good conduct issued by the national police authority”, that is ACRO.
The distinction that causes the most trouble, and the one worth fixing before you spend any money, is between ACRO and the Disclosure and Barring Service. They are separate organisations issuing separate products for entirely separate purposes. ACRO exists to support international mobility; the DBS exists to support safer recruitment inside the UK. Confusing the two costs applicants weeks every single month, and it is the reason we have given the comparison its own section immediately below.
The one-line version: if a foreign government is asking, you need ACRO. If a UK employer is asking, you probably need DBS. Almost nobody needs both, and a DBS check cannot substitute for an ACRO certificate on a visa application.
ACRO vs DBS vs Basic Disclosure vs Police Scotland and AccessNI
Four different UK bodies issue something that could reasonably be described as a criminal record check, and search engines cheerfully mix them together. Here is what each one actually is, and which of them a foreign authority will accept.
| Document | Issued by | Designed for | Accepted abroad? |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACRO police certificate | ACRO Criminal Records Office | Visas, residency and immigration overseas | Yes — this is the one |
| Basic DBS check | Disclosure and Barring Service | UK employment, unspent convictions only | Rarely — usually rejected |
| Standard / Enhanced DBS | Disclosure and Barring Service | Regulated UK roles, children and vulnerable adults | No — not an international document |
| Basic Disclosure (Scotland) | Disclosure Scotland | Employment in Scotland | Rarely — ACRO is still preferred |
| AccessNI certificate | AccessNI (Department of Justice NI) | Employment in Northern Ireland | Rarely — ACRO covers all of the UK |
| Subject access request | Individual police forces | Seeing your own data under UK GDPR | No — explicitly refused by many authorities |
Two of these deserve a further word. The first is the subject access request. It is free, which makes it tempting, and it does return information about your record — but it is a data protection disclosure to you personally, not a certificate issued for a third party to rely on. Several immigration authorities, Canada's among them, name subject access printouts specifically as unacceptable. Do not use one to save £68.
The second is the Basic DBS. At around £21 it is a third of the price of an ACRO certificate, it arrives quickly, and it says “criminal record check” on it, so it looks like a bargain version of the same thing. It is not. A Basic DBS shows unspent convictions only, it is framed entirely around the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, and it carries no statement about international use. When an embassy rejects it, you have lost the fee and, far more painfully, several weeks.
💡 Scotland and Northern Ireland applicants
You do not need a separate Scottish or Northern Irish check for a visa. The ACRO certificate draws on the Police National Computer, which covers the whole United Kingdom, so one certificate answers for time lived in Glasgow, Belfast, Cardiff and London alike. Disclosure Scotland and AccessNI products exist for domestic employment vetting under devolved arrangements, not for immigration.
Who Needs One, and Why
Broadly, if a foreign state is about to give you the right to live, work or practise a profession on its territory, it wants to know whether you have a criminal record at home. The ACRO certificate is how the UK answers that question in a form another government can trust.
Most requirements are triggered by a residence threshold rather than by nationality. The usual formulation is that you need a police certificate from any country where you have lived for six or twelve months or more since turning eighteen — some authorities use sixteen. That means a Canadian citizen who spent two years working in Manchester needs an ACRO certificate just as much as a British citizen does, and it also means a British applicant who spent three years in Dubai will need a UAE certificate alongside their ACRO.
💼 Work visas and employment permits
The largest single category. UAE and Qatar employment visas, Saudi iqama files, Thai work permits and LTR applications, Australian skilled and employer-sponsored subclasses, Canadian work permits and permanent residence, New Zealand work and resident visas. In the Gulf the certificate is usually assembled by your employer's PRO alongside your degree certificate.
🏠 Residency and long-stay permits
Spanish non-lucrative and digital nomad visas, Portuguese D7 and D8 routes, Dutch and German residence permits, Italian and French long-stay applications. European residency routes are where the tight three-month freshness windows bite hardest, because consular appointments are often booked months ahead.
🔑 Immigration and citizenship
US immigrant visas and adjustment of status, Canadian permanent residence, citizenship applications by descent or naturalisation, and family reunification routes. These files often require certificates from several countries at once, all authenticated to the same standard.
🎓 Professional registration abroad
Medical, nursing, dental, teaching and legal regulators in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the Gulf and much of Europe require a police certificate as part of registration — separately from, and often earlier than, the visa itself. Two apostilled originals are frequently needed.
Two practical consequences follow. First, if you are moving for work you may need the certificate twice over: once for the professional regulator and once for the immigration authority, on different timetables. Order additional copies from ACRO at the outset rather than reapplying later. Second, the ACRO certificate almost never travels alone. It usually sits in a bundle with a degree certificate, a birth or marriage certificate and sometimes a medical report, each with its own authentication rules. Our complete UK apostille guide covers sequencing the whole bundle against a single deadline.
How to Apply to ACRO, Step by Step
The application is entirely online and takes most people about half an hour, provided they have their address history to hand. Apply directly at acro.police.uk. There is no advantage to using an intermediary for the ACRO stage itself — the fee is the same to everyone and ACRO does not offer priority access to agents.
Step 1 — Check you are ordering the right product
On the ACRO site, choose the police certificate, not a subject access request. If you are given a choice of purpose, state the destination country and the reason (work visa, residency, professional registration). Some countries have a named certificate variant, and selecting the destination correctly ensures you get the version their authorities expect.
Step 2 — Give your name exactly as it appears on your passport
This is where more applications go wrong than anywhere else. The name on the certificate must match the name on your passport and on your visa application character for character — including middle names, hyphens and accents. Also declare every name you have previously been known by: maiden names, names before a deed poll, anglicised versions. Undeclared former names produce an incomplete search, and an incomplete search is a certificate an immigration officer may not accept.
Step 3 — Supply a complete address history
You will be asked for your UK addresses over the past several years with no unexplained gaps. Student halls, house shares, a few months at a parent's address between tenancies — all of it counts. Gaps are the most common cause of an application being paused for clarification, and a paused application does not accrue processing days. Dig out old tenancy agreements or bank statements before you start rather than guessing.
Step 4 — Upload identity and address evidence
You will need a colour scan of your passport biographical page, a recent passport-style photograph, and proof of your current address such as a utility bill, bank statement or council tax bill dated within the last three months. Applicants living outside the UK can still apply; you supply evidence of your overseas address instead.
Step 5 — Fingerprints, only if ACRO asks
Fingerprints are not part of a routine application. ACRO requests them, or additional photographs, only in the minority of cases where your identity cannot be confirmed from the documents supplied, or where a possible record match has to be resolved before the certificate can be issued. If you are asked, act immediately — the file sits idle until the prints arrive, and that idle time is not counted in the quoted turnaround. Some destination countries separately require fingerprints as part of their own visa process; that is a different requirement and is handled by that country's authorities, not by ACRO.
Step 6 — Order additional copies now, not later
Additional copies requested as part of the original application cost £7.50 each. A second original is astonishingly useful: it lets you apostille one for the immigration authority while keeping one for the professional regulator, or gives you a spare if a document is lost in the post. Requesting a second copy later means a fresh application at full price.
Step 7 — Take delivery of the physical certificate
The certificate is posted to you. Keep it flat, do not laminate it, do not staple anything to it, and do not write on it. The FCDO attaches the apostille to the original document, and a damaged, laminated or annotated certificate can be refused. If you are abroad, arrange for it to be sent to a UK address if you can — it has to come back to the UK for the apostille anyway.
⚠️ You need the physical certificate for an apostille
Whatever electronic copy you may be sent or able to download, the FCDO apostille goes onto the physical original that ACRO posts to you. A printed PDF, a scan or a photograph has no recognised signature on it and will be rejected. Make sure a postal copy is on its way to a UK address before you plan anything else.
ACRO Fees and Processing Times in 2026
ACRO publishes two service levels. The figures below are the current 2026 fees paid directly to ACRO; they are separate from, and additional to, the cost of the apostille.
| ACRO service | Fee | Processing time |
|---|---|---|
| Standard service | £68 | Up to 20 working days |
| Premium service | £121 | Up to 2 working days |
| Additional copy, ordered with the application | £7.50 | With the main certificate |
ACRO fees and service levels as published for 2026. Fees are paid to ACRO at acro.police.uk and are not part of our apostille price. Always check the current figures on the ACRO site before applying.
Read those processing times carefully, because they are narrower than they look. ACRO's quoted turnaround is processing time only. It excludes the day you submit the application, it excludes the day the certificate is posted, and it excludes however long Royal Mail takes to deliver it. A “two working day” premium certificate is realistically in your hands four to five days after you apply. A standard certificate quoted at twenty working days can easily be five weeks door to door.
The quoted time also assumes a clean application. If ACRO has to come back to you about an address gap, an undeclared former name or an identity document it cannot read, the clock effectively pauses while it waits for your reply. Applications that need fingerprints or further enquiries take longer still, and there is no way to buy your way past that stage — the premium fee accelerates processing, not investigation.
✅ When the premium service is worth £53 more
Pay for premium when your visa date is fixed and less than about eight weeks away, when your destination has a three-month freshness window and you cannot afford to burn three of those weeks waiting, or when a professional registration deadline sits ahead of the visa. Otherwise the standard service is fine — the money is usually better spent on getting the apostille done quickly, because that is the stage where the public route is genuinely slow.
The Apostille Step — Why Order and Timing Matter Most
This is the section to read twice. Almost every ACRO problem that reaches us is not a problem with the certificate; it is a problem with the sequence. People treat the apostille as a tidy-up job to be done once the “real” document has arrived, and by the time they get to it the certificate is already too old to submit.
The apostille is a numbered certificate issued by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office under the 1961 Hague Convention. Attached to your ACRO certificate, it confirms that the signature and seal on it are genuine and were applied by someone with authority to apply them. It says nothing about your record and nothing about your eligibility — it authenticates the paper. That is precisely why a visa officer in Abu Dhabi or Bangkok insists on it: they have no way of knowing what an ACRO officer's signature looks like, and the apostille is the internationally agreed answer.
⏳ The rule that catches everyone: the clock starts at issue, not at apostille
Destination countries measure the age of your police certificate from the date ACRO issued it. The apostille does not reset that clock, does not extend it, and does not create a new date that counts. An ACRO certificate issued on 1 March and apostilled on 20 May is, to a consulate applying a three-month rule, a document that expired on 1 June — and you have already spent eleven weeks of its life on administration.
The correct mental model is that the apostille must happen inside the validity window, not after it. Work backwards: if your destination allows three months and your consular appointment is in nine weeks, the certificate must be issued no more than a few weeks before that appointment and apostilled almost immediately afterwards.
Get this wrong and there is no fix. There is no renewal, no extension and no re-dating. You apply for a brand new certificate and pay the fee again.
🔄 The correct order of operations
For the overwhelming majority of applicants the sequence is simple, and deviating from it is what causes trouble:
- Confirm the requirement in writing from whoever is asking — the employer, the sponsor, the consulate, the regulator. Ask three questions: apostille only or embassy attestation as well, is a translation needed, and what is the maximum age of the certificate at submission.
- Apply to ACRO, choosing the service level that fits the deadline you have just established. Order a second original at £7.50 while you are there.
- Apostille it as soon as it arrives. Not next month. The apostille is the fastest stage of the whole process if you use a registered provider, so there is no reason to leave it sitting.
- Then, and only then, translate if a translation is required. The translation must cover the apostille as well as the certificate, so it has to be produced after the apostille is attached. Translating first is a classic and expensive mistake.
- Then embassy attestation, if your destination is outside the Hague Convention. The embassy will only attest a document that already carries an FCDO apostille.
- Submit — well inside the freshness window.
⏱️ What each apostille route actually costs in time
Posting it to the FCDO yourself
- • £45 per document, paid to the FCDO
- • Plan against up to 25 working days on the standard public postal route
- • Plus postage out and tracked return
- • Your only original is in the post for the duration
- • No pre-check — a wrong document simply comes back
Using LegaliseNow
- • £90 per document, FCDO fee included
- • Apostilled the next working day after we receive it
- • We check the certificate before submission
- • FCDO-registered, insured to £2 million
- • Tracked delivery, or free collection in London
The gap between those two columns is the whole argument. On a three-month validity window, spending up to five weeks on the apostille alone consumes more than a third of the certificate's usable life — and if anything goes wrong you have no time left to recover. For the full mechanics of the FCDO stage, see our guide to the FCDO apostille process.
ACRO certificate — Hague countries
£90
Apostille only. No solicitor needed — ACRO is a government-issued original. Includes the £45 FCDO fee. Next working day.
Start Your Order →UAE, Qatar, Thailand and other non-Hague
From £150
Apostille plus embassy attestation, handled end to end. Timing depends on the embassy.
Check My Country →Critical: ACRO Is Excluded From the FCDO e-Apostille
The FCDO operates an electronic apostille service that issues a digitally signed PDF apostille, typically within a couple of working days and with no documents in the post. It is cheaper, it is faster, and it is not available for your ACRO certificate.
Important ACRO certificates cannot be e-Apostilled — paper only
The e-Apostille service only covers documents that arrive at the FCDO carrying a verifiable digital signature the FCDO can check electronically — in practice, documents signed by registered UK solicitors and notaries using an approved digital certificate. An ACRO police certificate is a physical document bearing a wet-ink signature and a printed seal. There is no digital signature for the e-Apostille system to verify, so the route is closed. Your ACRO must go through the paper process, which means the physical original has to travel to the FCDO and back.
This matters for three reasons, and all three are about time and money.
It changes your timeline. If you have budgeted two days for an e-Apostille, you have under-planned. The paper route means physical transit in both directions plus FCDO handling. With a registered provider that is next working day at the FCDO plus courier time; on the public postal route you should be planning against up to twenty-five working days. Building an e-Apostille assumption into a visa timetable is one of the most common ways people miss a consular appointment.
It changes your risk. Because the original has to be posted, your one and only certificate is in transit. This is the strongest practical argument for ordering a second original at £7.50 when you apply — it is the cheapest insurance available anywhere in this process.
It creates a real risk of paying twice. We regularly speak to people who bought an e-Apostille online, received a digitally signed PDF, submitted it, and had it refused — then had to start the paper process from scratch with a certificate that had aged three weeks in the meantime. The e-Apostille is a genuine and useful service; it simply does not apply to this document. Our comparison of e-Apostille versus paper apostille sets out exactly which documents qualify for each.
💡 A related trap
Even where an e-Apostille is technically available for a document, a number of receiving authorities — including several Gulf ministries and some European civil registries — will not accept an electronic apostille and want ink on paper. For ACRO the question does not arise, since the paper route is the only one, but it is worth remembering when you are authenticating the other documents in your visa bundle.
Country-by-Country Requirements
Whether an apostille is enough depends on one thing: is your destination a member of the Hague Apostille Convention? If it is, the apostille is the complete authentication and no embassy is involved. If it is not, you need the apostille first and then attestation by that country's London embassy.
| Destination | What is required | Typical freshness window |
|---|---|---|
| AEUAE | Apostille plus UAE Embassy attestation, then MOFA in the UAE. Not a Hague member. | Around 3 months — strictly applied |
| SASaudi Arabia | Hague member since December 2022, so an apostille is legally sufficient. In practice sponsors and the Saudi Cultural Bureau frequently still ask for embassy attestation — confirm with your employer first. | 3–6 months |
| THThailand | Apostille plus Royal Thai Embassy legalisation. Not a Hague member. | 3–6 months |
| AUAustralia | Apostille only. Required for skilled, employer-sponsored and partner subclasses. | Up to 12 months |
| CACanada | Apostille only — Canada joined the Convention with effect from January 2024. Subject access printouts are not accepted. | 6–12 months by route |
| USUSA | Apostille only. Required for immigrant visas and adjustment of status. | Typically up to 12 months |
| NZNew Zealand | Apostille only. Required for work and resident visa categories. | Around 6 months |
| NLNetherlands | Apostille only. Usually accepted in English for IND purposes. | 3–6 months |
| DEGermany | Apostille only. A certified German translation is commonly required. | 3–6 months |
| ESSpain | Apostille only, plus a sworn traductor jurado translation covering the apostille. | Around 3 months — strictly applied |
| PTPortugal | Apostille only, plus a certified Portuguese translation for D7 and D8 routes. | Around 3 months |
Freshness windows are the periods authorities commonly apply and are given as planning guidance. Individual consulates and visa categories set their own rules — always confirm in writing before you order.
💬 Hague membership keeps changing — check before you assume
The list of member states has grown substantially in recent years, and a lot of advice online is out of date. Saudi Arabia joined in December 2022, China in November 2023 and Canada with effect from January 2024; India has been a member since 2005. Calling any of these “non-Hague” is simply wrong and will send you to an embassy you do not need. Vietnam is in transition: it acceded on 31 December 2025 and the Convention enters into force for Vietnam on 11 September 2026, so treat Vietnamese requirements as changing and confirm the current position before ordering. The genuinely settled non-Hague destinations for UK documents are the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Thailand and Egypt.
For the full document bundle and attestation chain in the countries where an ACRO certificate is most often demanded, see our dedicated guides to working in the UAE, working in Saudi Arabia, working in Thailand and working in Australia. If your destination is not listed above, our What Do I Need? tool covers 127+ countries and will tell you in about thirty seconds which route applies and what it costs.
Common Problems and How to Fix Them
These are the situations that actually arrive in our inbox, and what can realistically be done about each one.
The name on the certificate does not match my passport
A missing middle name, a maiden name, an accent dropped from a surname — any mismatch between the certificate, your passport and your visa forms invites a query. If the error is ACRO's, contact ACRO to have it corrected. If it reflects a genuine name change, the certificate is not wrong: submit it alongside an apostilled deed poll, marriage certificate or statutory declaration so the receiving authority can follow the chain. Do not attempt to annotate the certificate yourself — a marked certificate can be refused by the FCDO.
I cannot remember all my old addresses
Reconstruct the history from tenancy agreements, bank and credit card statements, GP registration records, your electoral roll history or your credit file, which lists addresses linked to your name. Be honest about approximate dates rather than leaving a gap — ACRO can work with “around March 2019”, but an unexplained hole in the timeline will pause your application.
My certificate has disclosed content, not “no trace”
A certificate that discloses a conviction or caution is still a valid certificate and is apostilled in exactly the same way at the same price. The FCDO neither reads nor judges the content — it authenticates the signature. Whether the disclosed matter affects your visa is a decision for the destination country's immigration authority, and many have thresholds well above minor or historic matters. What is guaranteed to cause a problem is failing to declare something that then appears on the certificate. If you are concerned, take immigration advice for that country before submitting, not after.
My certificate will expire before my appointment
There is no renewal or extension mechanism — you apply again and pay again. Before you do, check the rule you are working to: some authorities measure the window to the date of submission rather than the date of the appointment or the decision, which can buy you weeks. If you genuinely have to reapply, use the £121 premium service and a next-working-day apostille to compress the second attempt into about two weeks.
My certificate has been lost, damaged or laminated
Lamination is fatal: the apostille cannot be attached and the document cannot be verified, so a laminated certificate has to be replaced. The same applies to a certificate that is torn, water-damaged or so faded that the signature is unreadable. There is no replacement service — a lost or damaged certificate means a fresh application at the full fee. This is precisely the scenario that the £7.50 additional copy protects against, and why we recommend ordering one every time.
I ordered a DBS check by mistake
It happens weekly. There is no conversion route and no refund — a DBS certificate cannot be upgraded, exchanged or apostilled into something an embassy will accept. Apply to ACRO immediately, and given the time already lost, consider the premium service. Treat the DBS fee as sunk and concentrate on the deadline.
I need two apostilled certificates — one for the regulator, one for the visa
Entirely normal for doctors, nurses and teachers. Order two originals from ACRO at £7.50 for the second, and have both apostilled. Two apostilles at £90 each is far cheaper and faster than two full applications, and it means the regulator's copy and the immigration copy carry the same issue date, which keeps both inside the same freshness window.
Costs, Timeline and Planning Backwards From Your Visa Date
Our pricing is fixed and inclusive. The £45 FCDO fee is already inside the figures below, and an ACRO certificate needs no solicitor certification because it is a government-issued original signed by an officer whose signature the FCDO already recognises.
| Item | Paid to | Cost | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACRO certificate, standard | ACRO | £68 | Up to 20 working days |
| ACRO certificate, premium | ACRO | £121 | Up to 2 working days |
| Additional original copy | ACRO | £7.50 | With the main certificate |
| Apostille — no solicitor needed | LegaliseNow | £90 | Next working day |
| Embassy attestation (UAE, Qatar, Thailand, Kuwait, Egypt) | LegaliseNow | From £150 | Embassy dependent |
| Typical total — Hague destination | £158 | About 5–6 weeks | |
| Typical total — UAE or Thailand route | From £218 | About 7–9 weeks |
Totals assume the standard ACRO service plus one apostille. Delivery is charged separately: free collection in London, or tracked DHL from £11.63 in the UK. Our full apostille cost guide breaks down every fee in the process.
📅 A worked example: UAE start date in 10 weeks
James has accepted a job in Dubai with a start date ten weeks away. His employer's PRO needs an ACRO certificate that is apostilled by the FCDO and attested by the UAE Embassy in London, and the UAE applies a tight freshness window of roughly three months. Here is how the ten weeks are actually spent — and why he cannot afford to wait.
Week 1 — James emails the PRO and gets the requirement in writing: apostille plus UAE Embassy attestation, certificate to be no more than three months old at submission in Dubai. He applies to ACRO the same day on the standard £68 service and adds a second original for £7.50.
Weeks 2–5 — ACRO processes the application. The certificates are posted and arrive at the end of week five. The clock on the three-month window started the day they were issued, so five of the twelve or thirteen available weeks are already gone.
Week 6 — he posts both originals to us by tracked mail. We check them, confirm no solicitor step is needed, and they are apostilled at the FCDO the next working day. Cost: £90 each. Had he posted them to the FCDO himself, this single step could have run to five weeks and left him with no margin at all.
Weeks 7–8 — the apostilled certificate goes to the UAE Embassy in London for attestation, from £150. Embassy turnaround is outside anyone's control, which is why it needs a fortnight of headroom rather than a couple of days.
Week 9 — the fully attested certificate is couriered to James. He sends it to the PRO in Dubai for MOFA attestation and the residence visa file, with a week in hand before his start date and around four weeks left on the freshness window.
UK-side total: £315.50 for the ACRO certificate, a spare original, the apostille and embassy attestation — delivered with margin to spare. Had James waited two weeks before applying, or posted the certificate to the FCDO himself, he would have missed his start date.
⏳ How to plan backwards in one minute
Start from the date you must submit, not the date you fly, and subtract:
- • 2 weeks if embassy attestation is needed (UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Thailand, Egypt)
- • 1 week for the apostille via a registered provider — or 5 weeks if you post it to the FCDO yourself
- • 1 week for translation, if one is required, done after the apostille
- • 4–5 weeks for a standard ACRO certificate, or 1 week for premium
If the total runs past your freshness window, the answer is not to start earlier — that only guarantees the certificate expires. The answer is to start later and buy speed at each stage.