On Thu, September 11, 2008 01:27, Chris McKenna wrote:
Looking at the application for membership forms for
WMUK v1 (WER), I note
that applicants for guarantor membership must be 18 or over (presumably
for legal reasons).
Yes.
For supporting members the form also asks for a date
of birth, but I don't
understand why this is needed? The acompanying text states:
I am not a lawyer, but it is my understanding that the signature of a
parent or guardian is not requried for this type of agreement for those
aged 13 or over. And, even if it is required, I do not beleive that we
need to know that it is a parent/guardian's signature rather than the
applicant's signature.
I say this because if we do need to know whether someone is under 18 or
not, there is no need for us to ask about it. If there is no way of
knowing the age of a person from their form, then I cannot see that
requiring a CRB check of those processing the forms is legal.
iirc the reasoning was along the following lines ...
If someone is under 18 then by asking for the actual date we could do a
follow-up inviting that person to guarantor (member) status when they
turned 18. As regards the actual signature I believe it is required to
know whether it is the individual or someone signing on their behalf in
order that we retain a signature for comparison purposes on subsequent
forms (votes, proposals, etc).
So far I've seen nothing proposed that would seem to *require* CRB checks
to be carried out prior to getting everything started (as opposed to the
long delays that would likely ensue if that route were taken)
Alison