Candidate Privacy  Policy (UK)

What is the purpose of this Document?

The Royal Town Planning Institute is a “data controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. This privacy notice applies to candidates who are applying to work with us (whether as an employee, worker or contractor). It makes you aware of how and why your personal data will be used, namely for the purposes of the recruitment exercise, and how long it will usually be retained for. It provides you with certain information that must be provided under the General Data Protection Regulation (EU 2016/679) (GDPR).

Data Protection Principles
We will comply with data protection law and principles, which mean that your data will be:
  • Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner.
  • Collected only for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes related to your application with us and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
  • Adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which they are processed.
  • Accurate, and kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed.
  • Processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data, including protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage.
The Kind of Information We Hold About You
In connection with your application for work with us, we will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:
  • The information you have provided to us in your curriculum vitae and covering letter.
  • The information you have provided on our recruitment site when you registered as a user including name, title, address, telephone number, personal email address, date of birth, gender, employment history, qualifications.
  • Any information you provide to us during an interview process including interview test results.
We may also collect, store and use the following “special categories” of more sensitive personal information:
  • Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, political opinions and any disability declared in order for us to fulfil our commitment to Disability Confident.
  • Information about criminal convictions and offences depending on the position for which you are applying.
How is Your Personal Information Collected?
We collect personal information about candidates from the following sources:
  • You, the candidate.
  • Recruitment agencies, from which we may collect the following categories of data: name, title, address telephone number, personal email address, employment history, qualifications, or disabilities.
  • Your named referees, from whom we collect the following categories of data: name, employment history, and other appropriate information they provide.
How We Will Use Information About You?
We will use the personal information we collect about you to:
  • Assess your skills, qualifications and suitability for the work or job role
  • Carry out reference checks, where appropriate
  • Communicate with you about the recruitment process
  • Keep records related to our recruitment and selection processes
  • Comply with legal or statutory requirements.
It is in our legitimate interests to use this information to decide whether to appoint you to the job role or work.

Having received your CV and covering letter, we will then process that information to decide whether you meet the requirements to be shortlisted for the role.

If we decide to call you for an interview, we will ask you to provide a document (passport, birth certificate) which confirms your right to work in the UK, prior to attending interview.

We will use the information collected throughout the recruitment process to decide whether to offer you the job role or work.  If we decide to offer you the job role or work we may then take references or carry out reference and qualification checks before confirming your appointment.

If you fail to provide personal information
If you fail to provide information when requested, which is necessary for us to consider your application (such as evidence of qualifications or work history) we will not be able to process your application successfully.  For example, if we require references for this job role and you fail to provide us with relevant details, we may not be able to take your application further.

How we use sensitive personal information
We will use your sensitive personal information in the following ways:
  • We will use information about your disability status to consider whether we need to provide appropriate adjustments during the recruitment process, for example whether adjustments need to be made during an interview or assessment or to enable you to undertake the role.
  • We will use information about your race or national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs or sexual orientation to ensure meaningful equality, diversity and inclusion monitoring and reporting.
Information about criminal convictions
We do not envisage that we will process information about criminal convictions, unless they directly impact on the type of work you will be involved in.  For example, a previous conviction of fraud for job roles involving dealing with financial data or purchases.

Data Sharing and Data Security
We will only share your personal information if we are required by legislation to do so or if there are essential business reasons eg transferring data to a new database.

We have in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed.  In addition, we limit access to your personal information only to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know the reason.  They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

Data Retention
For how long will you use my information?
We will retain your personal information for a period of six months after we have communicated to you our decision about whether to appoint you to the job or work project.  We retain your personal information for that period so that we can show, in the event of a legal claim, that we have not discriminated against candidates on prohibited grounds and that we have conducted the recruitment exercise in a fair and transparent way.  After this period, we will securely destroy your personal information in accordance with Data Protection laws and regulations.

If we wish to retain your personal information on file, on the basis that a further opportunity may arise in future and we may wish to consider you for that, we will write to you separately, seeking your explicit consent to retain your personal information for a fixed period unless you have specifically requested that your data is retained.

Right of Access, Correction, Erasure and Restriction
Your rights in connection with personal information
Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:
  • Request access to your personal information ( commonly known as a "data subject access request").  This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check we are lawfully processing it.
  • Request correction of he personal information that we hold about you.  This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
  • Request erasure of your personal information.  This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it.  You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
  • Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground.  You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
  • Request the restriction of processing of your personal information.  This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example, if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
    Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.
If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please contact the Head of Human Resources and Office Services in writing.

Right to Withdraw Consent
When you apply for a position with RTPI, you provide consent to us processing your personal information for the purposes of the recruitment exercise.  You have the right to withdraw your consent for processing for that purpose at any time.  To withdraw your consent, please contact the Head of Human Resources and Office Services.  Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your application and, subject to our data protection policy, we will dispose of your personal data securely.

Data Protection Officer
We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) to oversee compliance with the privacy notice.  If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the Governance manager at Data.protection@rtpi.org.uk

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues.