The government should rethink new rules for vetting people who work with children to avoid unnecessary bureaucracy, the man who led the inquiry that prompted the procedures said today.

Sir Michael Bichard said that in some cases "the line has been drawn in the wrong place" and authors who occasionally visited schools should not necessarily need to register with the new vetting scheme.

Bichard led an inquiry into the rules governing child protection in response to the murders of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells by the school caretaker Ian Huntley in 2002. From October this year, the Independent Safeguarding Authority will check all individuals who work with children, requiring them to register with a national database for a fee of £64.

Last month a group of leading children's authors, including Philip Pullman, told the Guardian they would stop giving talks in schools in protest at the new system. Pullman called the plan "outrageous, demeaning and insulting".

Bichard told the Independent he believed that those who visited schools infrequently, such as actors or authors, need not necessarily be vetted, and he had spoken to Sir Roger Singleton, the chairman of the Independent Safeguarding Authority, about the matter.

"If you visit one school in January, and then don't visit that school again, but visit another school in February and another in March, is that frequent or intensive? I think that's something which might merit reconsideration," he said.

Bichard described the previous vetting system as "a mess" that needed reform, but said: "What I didn't want was a disproportionate response. I made it very clear that I didn't want parents to have to check relatives before they could put their children in their care for babysitting and things like that. We must have proportionate arrangements. We mustn't over-react."

However, he said the authors' reaction had been "disproportionate". "I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who say that just because they have to go through a checking process, somehow it's being implied that they are a child molester," he said.

"I don't think Roger Federer complains that because he has to expose himself to drug-testing, he's being accused of being a cheat – I think he accepts that as part of the responsibility of playing top-class tennis."