A St Helens charity#
Apex Charitable Trust Limited, known as Apex Trust, works in one place: the borough of St Helens, Merseyside, where it has delivered services since 1996. Its aim is to promote employment as a way out of offending. It offers a holistic, trauma-informed and non-judgemental service to local adults with convictions, and to people at risk of offending, and it advises local employers about recruiting people with a record. Its information, advice and guidance has held the matrix quality standard since 2007. It is a small charity, with an income of about £200,000 in the year to March 2025.
Plan Bee and the North Road base#
Since January 2020 Apex has run the Plan Bee Community Coffee Shop on North Road in St Helens town centre. It is a working café and a training ground: people volunteer there and take free accredited courses in barista skills, food hygiene, cookery and customer service. A digital hub opened inside it in February 2025, with free wi-fi and tablets, where staff help people manage Universal Credit accounts, reach housing services and apply for jobs. The same building hosts weekly groups, including a women's hub and a men's wellbeing group.
How to get a referral#
Apex's advice and guidance page links to an online referral form. You can refer yourself, or a probation officer or support worker can refer you. The form asks whether you live in St Helens, and says plainly that referrals from outside the area cannot be accepted; it points people elsewhere to the Clinks directory of services. You can also email or call in at the North Road base, open Monday to Thursday from 9am to 5pm and Friday until 4pm.
What a new name means for a job#
Apex publishes nothing about changing your name. What it does explain is disclosure. Its FAQs and information pages cover spent and unspent convictions and the filtering of some old and minor offences from standard and enhanced checks, and its page for employers says they can only ask about the convictions and cautions they are legally entitled to know about.
That is where a change of name fits. A new name does not change what you must disclose. If a job needs a criminal record check, the DBS application asks for every name you have used, with dates, and a check searches all of them. People released on licence have to let their supervising officer know about any other name they use, and anyone on the sex offenders register has three days to notify the police. What a new name can do is make old press reports harder to link to you when a manager or colleague searches online.
Further reading#
- Can I change my name if I have a criminal record?: the rules on police, licence and checks.
- What DBS asks for: previous names on a check.
- Changing your name with your employer: payroll and records once you are in work.
- Charities for people with a criminal record, including services outside St Helens.
This page describes what Apex Trust publishes on its own website, read on 26 October 2026. Apex Trust has not reviewed it, and listing a charity here does not mean it recommends this handbook or any deed poll service.
