Do you have to contact my ex-partners?

If a previous relationship has resulted in the birth of any children we are required by Regulations to contact this ex-partner and seek his/her views, unless doing so would put you at risk. If you are at all worried about this please let us know. Please be reassured that we understand that relationships can end acrimoniously and references from ex-partners may not always be positive, we look at this information carefully in the light of all the other information we have gathered.

If you have lived with an ex-partner, even though there have not been any children from this relationship, it is good practice for us to try and contact them too.

We know that people often lose touch and we would ask that you make attempts to trace them via mutual friends or family or via social media. Again if you are particularly worried about this, please talk to us, we would never want to put someone at risk to get this information.

If you have been in a relationship of a significant duration (i.e. over 12 months) but haven’t lived together, again, we would want to, if possible, try to contact this person and obtain a reference. If you feel there is a reason that we shouldn’t do this again please talk to us about this. We would never seek references without your consent or knowledge.