In 2005, former police officers Rob Kinrade and Dave Bell had the idea of putting their experience and investigative skills to a different use. The company they founded, Expol, is still going strong.

Rob says: ‘We were both career detectives. We’d both done about 23 years’ service, 19 of which for me were in plain clothes. Dave had been in overall charge of CID; the fraud squad as it was then; the family protection unit and the scenes of crime.

‘We started Expol as forensic investigators and corporate risk consultants and the company has evolved, but it’s still based on the foundations that were set in 2005 when it was set up. It’s based on three strands: investigation, employment screening and training courses, and we’ve stayed true to those three areas but we’ve evolved in each area.’

A typical investigation for Expol would be working for defence lawyers who have a criminal enquiry on the go.

Rob says: ‘It can be as simple as going out and interviewing witnesses on their behalf. It’s exactly what I’ve done for the best part of 40 years but now we’re working for the defence as opposed to the prosecution.

‘It could be an assault, it could be some sort of an affray in town, it could be a sexual offences case. Quite often, certain advocates will use us to deal with their client impartially so that we get as much information as we can out of that client.

‘The lawyer then is best placed to advise them accordingly on what action they should be taking in court and the lawyer knows exactly what their client is going to say when they get into court.’

Their biggest investigation so far concerned the tragic events at Abbotswood residential home during the pandemic.

Rob says: ‘We were contracted to the Department of Health and Socal Care to investigate the Abbotswood situation, to take it to a certain point whereby we thought there were grounds to suspect that criminal offences had taken place. At which point we had to stop and hand it back to the department, who in turn handed it to the Attorney General. That is probably the highest profile case we’ve had in recent years. It was quite harrowing as you can imagine because 20 people had died: it was professionally challenging and it was professionally stressful for those involved.’

Dave Bell has now retired, though he still keeps his hand in with some investigative work. The company has a new director, Alayne Sheffield, who looks after the employment screening side, along with internal human resources issues.

She says: ‘My background is financial services, both banking and life assurance, and human resources . I was actually a client of Expol and, after experiencing what the product was, I wanted to get involved.

‘The area that I am director of, employment screening, is quite a busy part of our business and is growing quite a bit. My human resources background, working with different people and situations in that area, has helped me to come into the business and bring some fresh ideas, get hold of that side of the business and help grow it.’

GDPR and data protection laws mean that employment screening is now strictly regulated compared with when the company started.

Alayne says: ‘You have to have a genuine reason as to why you want to investigate someone. That’s probably the big difference from many years ago.’

A candidate’s signed job application form means that their previous employers, going back 10 years, can be contacted and their background will be researched on the internet.

Their professional and educational qualifications – which, apparently, many people have a tendency to inflate – will be checked, as will their credit score. Expol is also registered to do criminal records checks.

Alayne says: ‘The product is so flexible that we can change it for each client. Some clients just want a light touch while some want more.

‘Some applicants get nervous. They shouldn’t because it’s already out there, we just have the skills and the resources to peel away the layers to find it, and it does add value.’

And, yes, if you’re applying for a job you should check your social media history carefully. Reputational risk is so important to companies nowadays that they may not wish to employ someone who once made, for example, racist or homophobic comments.

‘Social media is where people trip themselves up with their behaviour,’ says Rob.

Alayne adds: ‘Clients say to us: “We’ve decided not to proceed with this person because it doesn’t fit in with our values”, and whole of point of it is that they know what they’re getting when they bring people into their organisation.

‘The information [we discover] becomes their property. We don’t make any judgements about any of the information, it’s factual, it’s what we found and it’s up to them to decide if it is in line with their values and policies and to do with it what they want.’

Expol employs five researchers doing employment screening. Five investigators do investigation work for lawyers, and two trainers teach course on subjects including internet investigation and anti money laundering.

Rob says: ‘Cyber is a big training area for us now. We’ve recently joined up with a company called Tapiit to deliver cyber awareness training via live streams to personnel on board ships.

‘Law firms also use us to deliver cyber awareness training to their lawyers.

‘We’ll do an hour’s session with them, on the current trends and what to look out for, and some of it is as basic as “don’t click on links you don’t know, don’t click on the PDF you don’t know”, but of course it changes all the time, there’s different attacks.’

And, just returning to the theme of being careful on your social media, Rob has a salutary tale to share.

He says: ‘We had one employment screening case where the guy had been taken on by a large local company. He went on Facebook that night, naming the company and saying: “It’s s**t but it’ll do for now!” and then he went on about having a road rage incident.

‘So of course we got hold of that, fed it back to the human resources director and I don’t think he lasted long thereafter.’

Something for us all to think about next time we hit Facebook in the evening after a few glasses of wine.