From the Frontline to the Classroom: Why Graham and Vivianne Johnson Founded Vetting Hub

From the Front line to the Classroom: Why Graham and Vivianne Johnson Founded Vetting Hub

Introduction

If you have ever sat in a compliance audit wondering whether your screening process would hold up under scrutiny, you will understand exactly why we built Vetting Hub.

We are Graham and Vivianne Johnson and between us we have spent over 20 years at the operational heart of employment screening and vetting in the UK. Not advising from a distance. Not writing policy frameworks from behind a desk. Doing the work. Processing the files. Making the calls that matter.

This is our story and the reason Vetting Hub exists.

Twenty Years on the Front line

In 2004 we founded National Vetting Solutions, a specialist employment screening and vetting company serving clients across some of the most demanding regulated sectors in the UK.

Over the next two decades we processed thousands of vetting files across security, healthcare, financial services, education and government contracting. We built a business that our clients trusted with some of their most sensitive and consequential hiring decisions.

During those 20 years we saw things that most compliance training courses never mention.

We caught forged passports submitted by candidates who had invested significant time and money making them look genuine. We identified manipulated employment histories crafted to hide gaps, dismissals and criminal convictions. We flagged identity fraud at the point of screening that would have placed unsuitable individuals into positions of significant trust.

We also sat in client audits and defended screening decisions made under real operational pressure. We understood what regulators actually look for, what documentation needs to exist and what a defensible screening process genuinely looks like from the inside.

That operational knowledge is not something you learn in a classroom. It comes from doing the work, year after year, across thousands of real cases.

Why We Decided to Close National Vetting Solutions

In 2024 we made the decision to close National Vetting Solutions.

It was not a decision we took lightly. We had built something we were genuinely proud of and we had no shortage of offers to continue or to merge with other providers in the sector.

But the industry had been moving in a direction that no longer sat well with us. Employment screening had become increasingly commoditised. Price was driving decisions that should have been driven by quality, expertise and genuine compliance rigor. Providers were undercutting each other to win volume contracts while the standard of screening was quietly declining.

We were not prepared to compromise on the standards we had spent two decades building. So we closed the business on our own terms.

The Question We Kept Coming Back To

After closing National Vetting Solutions we had time to think clearly about what we actually wanted to do next.

The phone did not stop. Former clients, industry contacts and sector colleagues all had suggestions. Return to operational screening. Join an established provider. Consult independently at senior level.

We considered all of it. But we kept coming back to the same question.

What was the most valuable thing we could actually do with everything we had learned over 20 years?

The answer was not to go back to processing files. It was to share the knowledge those files had given us.

Why We Founded Vetting Hub

We launched Vetting Hub in 2025 because we believed every organisation in the UK deserved access to the same level of screening knowledge, practical compliance tools and expert guidance that only the best operational providers ever had.

Not at consultancy day rates that only larger organisations could afford. Not locked inside one specialist provider that most HR teams would never have direct access to. At a straightforward monthly subscription that makes genuine expert knowledge accessible to any HR team, compliance manager or business owner who needs it.

We had spent 20 years building the knowledge. We had spent 20 years developing the practical frameworks, the audit ready documentation and the real world judgement that comes from handling thousands of complex cases. We wanted to make all of that available to the organisations that needed it most.

That is what Vetting Hub is. Not a course platform. Not a helpdesk. A specialist consultancy built by two people who have spent two decades doing the work your team is now responsible for.

What Vetting Hub Gives Your Organisation

Every organisation that joins Vetting Hub receives a dedicated monthly expert briefing delivered privately by Graham and Vivianne, a growing library of CPD certified courses, a comprehensive suite of ready to use compliance toolkits, The Vetting Hub Intelligence Briefing delivered weekly and their own branded training portal built exclusively for their team.

Everything we could not find when we were building our own business, we have built into Vetting Hub.

A Note From Graham and Vivianne

We did not build Vetting Hub to sell courses. We built it because we spent 20 years watching organisations make avoidable mistakes with their screening processes. Mistakes that led to audit failures, regulatory penalties and in some cases the placement of genuinely unsuitable individuals into positions of trust.

Most of those mistakes were not the result of bad intentions. They were the result of a lack of accessible, practical, expert knowledge.

Vetting Hub exists to close that gap.

If you would like to see exactly what your organisation would receive, book a free 30 minute online demo and we will show you everything.

Graham and Vivianne Johnson Founders, Vetting Hub