HARINGEY Council has pledged to tighten up recruitment procedures after it was revealed this week that a paedophile worked as a primary school cleaner in the borough for nine years.o

Kypriacous Georgiou, 52, was dismissed from his job in September after a pupil at a Haringey school made an allegation against him. The charges have since been dropped. However, in 1992, he was found guilty at Harrow Crown Court of indecent assault on a boy and a girl, and of gross indecency with another boy, for which he was sent to prison for nine months.

A spokesman for the council said: "We cannot comment on the dismissal or the alleged incident, but we acted decisively."

Following the allegation and Mr Georgiou's dismissal in September, the council has been attempting to police-check all of its employees with access to schools and jobs with children. However the checks can only be carried out with the permission of the employee.

A council spokesman explained that before the recent incident, under Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) guidelines issued in 1995 and amended in 1998, the council did not have to check the criminal records of staff in Mr Georgiou's position.

The DfEE guidelines stated that police checks should "not generally be carried out on existing employees", and included school cleaners as one of the posts for which a check would not normally be undertaken.

The 1998 law changes meant that any new employee in jobs with access to children would be police-checked, but still did not encompass those who were already employed in such jobs.

Chief executive of the council David Warwick said: "We were very concerned to find this loophole in the law and are now checking all our school staff.

"As soon as this came to our attention we acted decisively to ensure the safety of Haringey's pupils."