Letting someone into your home while you're out, or working around you while you get on with your day, is a reasonable thing to want some reassurance about. Two terms come up a lot — DBS certificate and insurance — and it's worth understanding what each one actually means before you rely on it.
A DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) certificate is an official check of someone's criminal record history in England and Wales. Independent cleaners who hold one will typically have applied for a basic DBS check themselves, which they can then show to clients. It's a genuinely useful piece of reassurance — but it's a snapshot at the point it was issued, not an ongoing guarantee, and it's worth checking the date on it.
Most independent cleaners who carry insurance hold public liability cover, which protects against accidental damage to your property or injury while they're working. It's worth asking what level of cover someone has and whether it's current, rather than assuming "insured" means the same thing for every cleaner.
This distinction matters more than it sounds like it should. A platform that says it "vets" or "personally interviews" every cleaner is making a claim about active verification — checking documents are genuine, following up references, ongoing monitoring. Holding copies of a cleaner's ID, DBS certificate and insurance on file is a different, more honest claim: it means those documents exist and have been seen, not that every detail has been independently verified beyond that.
Halo is upfront that it falls into the second category. Cleaners provide ID, a DBS certificate they've obtained themselves, and proof of insurance where they hold it, and Halo keeps copies on file. Homeowners are always welcome to ask to see a cleaner's documents directly before a first visit — that's a normal, sensible thing to ask for.
These are reasonable questions for any homeowner to ask, whether you find a cleaner through Halo, a recommendation, or anywhere else.