A RECRUITMENT drive for hundreds of teachers and social workers across Dorset could be plunged into chaos because of delayed police checks.

A new system of mounting criminal checks on would-be members of staff who deal with children has sparked a huge backlog.

So far the Criminal Records Bureau - which now deals with all checks centrally - has failed to complete a single check on more than 200 people the county council is considering recruiting as teachers or school-based staff.

And out of more than 170 security checks requested by social services in the county, the bureau has returned just four.

Coun Tim Palmer, leader of Dorset County Council, said today that he was writing to Home Secretary, David Blunkett to call for urgent action to speed up the work of the newly created Criminal Records Bureau (CRB). He said the snarl-up in the system was putting the county council - Dorset's biggest employer - in "an untenable position".

He said: "This is the busiest time of year for the recruitment of teachers and the bureau's failings are throwing our recruitment processes into disarray. This also impacts on a wide range of other people - including bus drivers and even mums helping out on school trips - in fact everyone working with children."

The county council asks for criminal records checks on anyone applying to work with children. Until recently Dorset Police provided the service. But under new regulations the council now has to go through the CRB.

A spokesman for the CRB said today: "In the first three months since the CRB was set up we have dealt with 47,000 disclosure checks and eventually we hope to be able to turn around 90 per cent of applications within three weeks.

"Currently we are experiencing teething problems, but by August we hope to have sorted most of these problems out."