ACRO Police Certificate

An ACRO Police Certificate is often required for people who wish to emigrate or need a visa to live and work abroad.

The certificate details if you have a criminal record in the United Kingdom and is often required as part of the process obtaining a visa by a Consulate/High Commission. It will also include details of any foreign criminal history if it has been disclosed to UK authorities. Certificates also contain impending prosecutions and offences that may be under investigation.

The ACRO Criminal Records Office, who issue the certificates, are a national police unit. Founded in 2006 as the ACPO Criminal Records Office, the aim was to establish an operationally focused unit to organise the management of criminal records information and enhance the links between criminal records and biometric information.

Your ACRO Police Certificate may be provided to you in any of the following ways:

1. Issued in an original physical version and signed by an official of the issuing authority;
2. Issued in an original physical version without a signature from an official of the issuing authority;
3. Issued in electronic format.

1. If the ACRO police certificate has been issued in an original physical version and signed by an official of the issuing authority, it does not strictly need to be notarised. If you are using it abroad, you may get an apostille on the certificate directly from the FCDO. We can however still notarise the certificate. We will draft and attach a notarial certificate confirming the authenticity of the ACRO police certificate.
2. If the ACRO police certificate has been issued in an original physical version but not signed by an official of the issuing authority, it cannot be apostilled without first being notarised. We will check the document is authentic and then attach a notarial certificate to the original.
3. Lastly if the ACRO police certificate has been issued electronically we will also need to notarise the document prior to getting an apostille. You will need to share the original email in which the certificate was attached as a PDF and we will check the document is authentic. We will then attach a notarial certificate to the printed version.

If you only need the ACRO police certificate notarised, that’s exactly what we’ll do. If you also need an apostille, consular legalisation or translation we’ll handle all steps for you.