Declaring your convictions

If you have any unspent criminal conviction, you must declare them when looking for a home insurance quote as failure to do so could invalidate your policy.

If you have an unspent conviction, you are obliged to declare it, but if your conviction is spent, then according to the rehabilitation of offenders act 1974, it may not count against you in any way.

Some criminal conviction become ‘spent’ after a certain length of time. If your conviction resulted in community service, it will be spent after 5 years. If you were sentenced to up to 6 months in prison, your conviction will be spent after 7 years. Up to 2 and a half years in prison, your conviction will be spent after 10 years and any sentence longer will never be spent.