Cancellation of the annotations of disciplinary sanctions in the Central Personnel Register.

The consultation concerns the power to call for the cancellation of disciplinary penalty entries in the Central Personnel Register.

Article 16 of the Regulations of the Central Personnel Register, in the wording given by Royal Decree 2073/1999 of 30 December, which amends the Regulations of the Central Personnel Register and the rules of coordination with those of the other Public Administrations, dedicated to the cancellation, replacement and modification of seats, provides the following:

1. Registrations and registrations will be cancelled in the cases provided for in this Regulation or when the acts they accredit have been cancelled by the Administration or by final judgment. The cancellation will be recorded by means of a marginal annotation referring to the canceled seat.

(…)

3. The cancellation or replacement of inscriptions or annotations may only be urged by the body that issued the act whose seat is intended to be cancelled or replaced, or by the Central Personnel Register itself in the cases provided for by this Regulation.

4. The interested parties may exercise the rights of cancellation and rectification of the registered seats in the terms established by the regulations governing their exercise (…)’.

According to the precept transcribed, the possibility of urging the cancellation of a registration or an annotation registers generally corresponds to the organ that issued the act whose seat is intended to be replaced or cancelled. Exceptionally, this power is granted to the Central Personnel Registry itself, in the cases expressly provided in the Regulations and, where appropriate, to the interested parties, only and exclusively when a right of cancellation and rectification is exercised, and in accordance with the regulations governing the exercise of such rights.

With regard to the cancellation of disciplinary sanction entries, we must refer to the specific implementing regulations. In this regard, under the fourth additional provision of Royal Legislative Decree 5/2015, of 30 October, approving the consolidated text of the Law on the Basic Status of Public Employees (hereinafter, TREBEP), Article 51 of the Regulation on the Disciplinary Regime of Officials of the State Administration, approved by Royal Decree 33/1986, of 10 January, establishes that:

“The disciplinary sanctions imposed on officials shall be recorded in the Central Personnel Register, with an indication of the offences that motivated them.

The cancellation of these annotations shall take place ex officio or at the request of the person concerned in the manner provided for in article 93, paragraph 2, of the Civil Servants Act of 7 February 1964. In no case shall sanctions that have been cancelled or that could have been cancelled be counted for the purposes of recidivism”.

From the joint reading of article 16 of the Regulations of the Central Personnel Register and article 51 of the Regulations on the Disciplinary Regime of Officials of the State Administration, it follows that, as a general rule, the cancellation of the annotations of disciplinary sanctions may only be urged by the organ that issued the sanction whose seat is intended to be cancelled, either ex officio or at the request of the interested parties.

In this way, Article 51 of the Disciplinary Regulations recognizes the possibility of the interested parties to go to the body that imposed the sanction so that it is the latter who calls for the cancellation, or it is the latter who initiates the procedure.

An interpretation to the contrary would mean that the provisions of Article 16 of the Regulations of the Central Personnel Register, which expressly states that the Central Personnel Register may only make the cancellation ex officio in the cases expressly provided for in its regulations, would be null and void. Therefore, as there is no provision in this regard, the Registry cannot proceed to the cancellation by the mere request of the interested party.

It is important to note, in addition, that in accordance with the provisions of Article 11.4 of the Regulation and the Resolution of 2 September 2002 of the State Secretariat for Public Administration, establishing new models of documents for the registration and entry in the Central Personnel Register of various administrative acts of personnel and new models of administrative titles and service sheets of civil and labour personnel in the service of the General State Administration, The cancellation of sanctions must be urged through a registration document F13R or L10R, depending on whether they are civil servants or workers, respectively, which must be signed, like any other registration document, by the competent personnel body.

Therefore, even in the event that the cash person requests the cancellation of the entry of the sanction in exercise of the right of deletion in accordance with the provisions of Article 16.4 of the Regulations of the Central Personnel Register, it will be the body that issued the sanction that requests such cancellation to the CPR through the referral of the corresponding registration document.

Therefore, and on the basis of the above, it must urge the cancellation in the Central Personnel Register of an annotation of a disciplinary sanction, the body that issued the act whose seat is intended to be cancelled, either ex officio or at the request of the interested party.

All of the foregoing is without prejudice to recalling that, according to the regime of competences of this management center, the answers to queries issued by this general directorate are merely informative and, consequently, are not of a binding criterion, nor do they give rise to rights or expectations of law, nor imply any link with the type of procedures to which they refer. Furthermore, in the absence of a mandatory or binding nature, the bodies receiving such replies may, where appropriate, finally take a decision that does not correspond to the opinion contained therein.

The responses to queries contained in this bulletin address the issues raised in the light of the regulations in force at the time of their issuance, so that such responses may be affected by subsequent legislative changes or judicial decisions.