A new agency set up to ensure perverts do not get hired to work with children has become the victim of its own vetting embarrassment  involving its own staff.

According  to the Daily Mirror successful applicants for jobs on the government’s Independent Safeguarding Authority were mistakenly rejected after a first interview, while those who had failed screening tests were asked back for a second interview.

Now the recruitment firm has had to write to jobseekers and admit it matched results to the wrong names.

The Darlington-based authority, which is due to start work in the autumn, is to monitor about 10 million applications for jobs with children in schools and hospitals.

The agency was created to prevent a repeat of school caretaker Ian Huntley, who was employed as a school caretaker despite a criminal past and went to murder ten-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.