Rules requiring millions of adults to be vetted before they give lifts to their children’s friends or visit a school are to be relaxed with immediate effect, it will be announced later today.

Ed Balls, the Children’s Secretary, has promised the u-turn to the Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS) after a barrage of protests, including complaints from children's authors including Philip Pullman who faced submitting to a criminal records check before they were allowed to make school visits.

The Government has accepted all the recommendations of an independent review of the scheme, to be published today, in a move welcomed by school leaders as a “victory for common sense”.

Sir Roger Singleton, author of the report and chairman of the Independent Safeguarding Authority, recommends that adults, such as children’s authors, who go into different schools to work with different groups of children should be exempt from the Criminal Records Bureau checks unless their contact with the same children is “frequent or intensive”.

Parents giving occasional lifts to children from other families will also no longer need to be registered unless the arrangement is regular and frequent.

There will be an immediate change to the rules so that 16 to 18-year-olds in education will no longer be required to register.

Overseas visitors bringing their own groups of children to the UK - such as to international camps or the London Olympics - should have a three-month exemption from the requirement to register.

Exchange visits lasting less than 28 days, where overseas parents accept the responsibility for the selection of the host family, should be regarded as private arrangements and will not require registration.

Mr Balls said that this would reduce the number required to register to nine million, from 11 million under the previous rules.

The Independent Safeguarding Authority is a register of adults who work with children, set up after the murders of nine-year-old Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman by their school's caretaker, Ian Huntley. Everyone over 16 who comes into regular contact with children now has to be registered after passing criminal record checks.

Mr Balls ordered the review of the rules following a storm of complaints that volunteers were being deterred from working with children because of the scheme.

The changes were welcomed by the Scout Association, teachers’ union NASUWT, children’s charity Barnardo’s and by author Philip Pullman.

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “This is a victory for common sense.

“Sir Roger Singleton and the Secretary of State have recognised that the previous rules would have unintended consequences for schools and parents and have set out a system that is much more proportionate to risk.”

Mr Balls said that while there had been some “ludicrous over-reactions” to the legislation, it was important there were measures in place to protect children.

“There are lots of myths here. A headteacher who is saying you should not come into school without a check, you shouldn’t help with the school play - that is a ludicrous over-reaction.

“It is not an over-reaction to say that we should make our children safe, what we shouldn’t do is do that in a way that is unnecessarily burdensome or doesn’t quite get to the point,” he told the BBC.

“I will do this in a common-sense, proper, practical way, but let’s not deny the reality, there are people who do some terrible things to children and it is our responsibility to make sure that kids are safe.”

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