QUITE rightly there are stringent background investigations on people from all walks of life who want to work with youngsters.

Teachers, youth leaders and adults involved in all kinds of work, including for example voluntarily sporting activities, have to undergo Criminal Records Bureau checks to ensure they do not have any skeletons in their past.

With such stringent procedures in force it does seem astonishing that nationally only just over half of the country’s Approved Driving Instructors have had CRB checks and that in Lancashire hundreds are likely to still need to undergo them.

This seems yet another example of a government body, this time the Driving Standards Agency, taking an inordinate amount of time to achieve something others are expected to have fully carried out.

And of course the fact the there are so many people still to be investigated has had to be dragged out of the DSA by use of the Freedom of Information Act.

The idea of a registered sex offender being able to give driving lessons to anyone’s 17-year-old daughter is quite horrifying.

The checks must be speeded up immediately to recify this unjustifiable slackness.