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Charities

NIACRO

A Northern Ireland charity working since 1971 to reduce crime and its impact, whose Disclosure NI service explains AccessNI checks for people with convictions.

Checked against NIACRO, Disclosure NI and legislation.gov.uk Updated

We wrote this page from NIACRO's own website and its register entry. NIACRO has not reviewed it and does not recommend Deed Polls Online; we list charities because they help. Registered charity NIC101599 (Northern Ireland)

The short answer

NIACRO works across Northern Ireland with people who have offended, their families, victims and young people, and runs Disclosure NI, a confidential advice service on criminal records and AccessNI checks. It publishes nothing on changing your name, but explains how to dispute a misspelt name on a certificate. A new name never removes a conviction from a check.

At a glance

Registered
NI NIC101599
Helps
People with convictions, their families, victims of crime and young people
Area
Northern Ireland
Name change help
None on names; Disclosure NI covers AccessNI checks, filtering and correcting a wrong name on a certificate
How to reach it
Disclosure NI by email or online form on weekdays; NIACRO enquiry form for other services

NIACRO's own guidance

On this page 4 sections
  1. What NIACRO does
  2. Disclosure NI
  3. A wrong name, and a new one
  4. Where to read more

What NIACRO does#

NIACRO has worked since 1971 to reduce crime and its impact across Northern Ireland. With about 150 staff and offices in Belfast, Portadown and Derry/Londonderry, it works with adults and children who have offended or are at risk of offending, their families, and victims of crime. Its services include Family Links for families of people in prison, the visitor centres at Maghaberry, Magilligan and Hydebank Wood, mentoring for young men on probation, employment support, Belong2 for foreign nationals and people from minority ethnic backgrounds in the justice system, and INSYNC for victims of paramilitary-style violence. In 2024-25 it worked with 7,710 people and families.

Disclosure NI#

The part of NIACRO most relevant to a new start is Disclosure NI, a confidential advice service with its own website for people with criminal records, their families and support workers, and for employers. You can email it or use its online form, Monday to Thursday from 9am to 5pm and Friday until 4pm. In 2024-25, NIACRO says, 413 people had disclosure advice from it on sharing conviction information with employers, colleges and others.

Its guides explain the three levels of AccessNI check, basic, standard and enhanced; the filtering rules that take some old convictions and cautions off standard and enhanced certificates; the free independent review if you think something should have been filtered; how to find out what is on your record through a police subject access request; and how to write a disclosure statement in three parts, present, past and future. It also has a calculator for working out what you need to disclose.

A wrong name, and a new one#

Disclosure NI's What's on my record? page covers one name problem directly. If a certificate shows the wrong title, a misspelt name or the wrong address, you contact AccessNI by email or letter with "dispute" as the reference. That is a correction. A change of name is a different thing, and NIACRO publishes nothing about it.

What to know before changing your name with a record in Northern Ireland:

  • An AccessNI certificate reports what is on your record, and that record belongs to you under any name. AccessNI's own FAQs (September 2026) tell the organisations that countersign applications to query any previously used surname that seems to be missing, and NIACRO's guide for employers tells them to confirm identity from photo ID and proof of address.
  • On the sex offenders register, the duty in section 84 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 runs here as in Great Britain: the police must hear of a new name no later than the third day after you begin using it.
  • Under probation or licence supervision, raise the plan with your probation officer first.

Where to read more#

Changing your name in Northern Ireland explains the deed poll and the General Register Office route for people born there. Can I change my name if I have a criminal record? goes through notification and supervision in detail, written mostly for England and Wales, and who can see my former name? explains what stays private. The criminal records charities page lists services elsewhere in the UK.

This page describes what NIACRO publishes on its own websites, read on 26 October 2026. NIACRO has not reviewed it, and listing a charity here does not mean it recommends this handbook or any deed poll service.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these on . If a source has changed since, tell us and we will correct the page.