A Government agency has reportedly branded hundreds of people who work with children criminals.

A newspaper report said that in the year to February almost 700 applicants for jobs in teaching, nursing, childminding and volunteer work had been wrongly accused of wrongdoing by the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB).

They will have to go through an appeals process to clear their names.

The CRB was established to vet people working with children.

In recent years the number of checks undertaken annually has almost doubled, from 1.5 million five years ago to almost 3 million last year.

The Daily Telegraph claims 680 people were issued with incorrect information in the 12 months to February 2008.

It also emerged the CRB's 450-strong staff claimed more than 5,000 sick days last year, working out at around two weeks per person.

A Criminal Records Bureau spokesperson said: "The Criminal Records Bureau's first priority is to help protect children and vulnerable adults, and we will always err on the side of caution to help ensure the safety of these groups.

"Since 2004 the CRB has stopped 80,000 unsuitable people working with vulnerable groups with a disclosure accuracy of 99.98 per cent.

"The CRB is acknowledged as an improvement on previous checking arrangement, although checks which do not correctly reveal a person's true criminal record are still clearly regrettable - even if they do represent a tiny proportion of all CRB checks."

© Independent Television News Limited 2008. All rights reserved.