What is the purpose of this document?

The PSA is a "data controller". This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. You are being sent a copy of this privacy notice because you are applying for 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 UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Data protection principles

The GDPR sets out principles with which data controllers and processors must comply when processing personal data (Article 5). These principles form the core of the obligations of the data controller and will usually form the basis of any claim that a data controller has not complied with its statutory duties.

We will comply with data protection law and principles, which means that your personal data will be:

·        Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.

·       Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.

·         Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.

·         Accurate and kept up to date.

·         Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.

·         Kept securely.

The kind of information we hold about you

The GDPR defines personal data as "any information relating to a data subject" (Article 4(1)). A data subject is the identified or identifiable person to whom the personal data relates and, in relation to this document, is the employee, worker or contractor applying for work.

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 any covering letter.

·      The information you have provided on our application form, 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.

·         The results of any tests you have undertaken as part of your application or interview process.

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 and political opinions.

·         Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records.

·         Information about criminal convictions and offences.

How is your personal information collected?

We collect personal information about candidates from the following sources:

·         You, the candidate.

·         Any recruitment agency who has submitted an application to us on your behalf, from which we collect the following categories of data: The information you have provided to us in your curriculum vitae and any covering letter.

·     The information you have provided on our application form, including name, title, address, telephone number, personal email address, date of birth, gender, employment history, qualifications.

Your named referees, from whom we collect the following categories of data: your period of employment, job title, reasons for leaving, salary on leaving, number of sick days and comments upon your attendance and timekeeping, working relationships and conduct at work.

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 role.

·         Carry out reference checks, where applicable.

·         Communicate with you about the recruitment process.

·         Keep records related to our recruitment processes.

·         Comply with legal or regulatory requirements.

It is in our legitimate interests to decide whether to appoint you to the role since it would be beneficial to our business to appoint someone to that role.

We also need to process your personal information to decide whether to enter into a contract of employment with you.

Having received your CV and covering letter and/or your application form, we will then process that information to decide whether you meet the basic requirements to be shortlisted for the role. If you do, we will decide whether your application is strong enough to invite you for an interview. If we decide to call you for an interview, we will use the information you provide to us at the interview to decide whether or not to progress you to the second interview stage OR offer you the role. If we decide to offer you the role, we will then take up references 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 role and you fail to provide us with relevant details, we will not be able to take your application further.

How we use particularly sensitive personal information

Particularly sensitive personal data is personal data that reveals:

·         Racial or ethnic origin.

·         Political opinions.

·         Religious and philosophical beliefs.

·         Trade union membership.

·         Genetic data.

·         Biometric data.

·         Health data.

·         Sex life and sexual orientation.

We will use your particularly sensitive personal information, with your explicit consent, 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 a test or interview .

We will use information about your race or national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, or your sexual life or sexual orientation, to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting.

Where appropriate, we will collect information about criminal convictions as part of the recruitment process or we may be notified of such information directly by you in the course of you working for us.    

Automated decision-making

You will not be subject to decisions that will have a significant impact on you based solely on automated decision-making.

Data security

We have put 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 to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need-to-know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. Details of these measures may be obtained from our Data Protection Officer (details provided below).

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

Data sharing     

We may have to share your data with third parties, including third-party service providers.  

 

We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law.  

 

We may transfer the personal information we collect about you outside the EU.  We will only do this where we are satisfied that the country to which we transfer your data is deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for your personal information.  

To ensure that your personal information does receive an adequate level of protection we have put in place appropriate measures to ensure that your personal information is treated by those third parties in a way that is consistent with and which respects the EU and UK laws on data protection.   

 

We will share your personal information with third parties where required by law, where it is necessary to administer the recruitment process with you or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so.  

 

”Third parties” includes third-party service providers (including contractors and designated agents). The following activities are carried out by third-party service providers: IT services, recruitment agencies, and HR consultants. For building access and security Ofcom, we will share necessary information with Ofcom.

 

All our third-party service providers are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.  

Data retention

We will retain your personal information for the following periods:

For roles involving a 1 stage interview process:

-     12 months from date of receiving the application for those candidates not selected for interview;

-     12 months from the date the position is filled for those who were selected for interview

For roles involving a 2 stage interview process:

-    12 months from the date of receiving the application for those who were not selected for interview or who were not selected for second interview;

-     12 months from the date the position is filled for those who were selected for second interview

We retain your personal information for the above periods 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. Where your personal data is kept for 12 months from the date the position is filled, this is so we can contact you as a credible candidate should the role become re-available and to potentially recruit you to the role without the need to re-initiate the interview process. Candidates are automatically contacted after a year to confirm their details will be deleted.  The candidate can choose to request for their account and some personal details to be retained. We will securely destroy your personal information in accordance with our data retention policy.

If we wish to retain your personal information on file on the basis that an 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 on that basis.

Rights of access, rectification, 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 that we are lawfully processing it.

·         Request correction of the 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 our Data Protection Officer in writing.

Right to withdraw consent

W here we have obtained your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your more sensitive personal information for a specific purpose you have the right to withdraw your consent for processing for that purpose at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact the DPO. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for that purpose unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.

Data protection officer (DPO) and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)

We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) to oversee compliance with this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the DPO. The DPO can be reached at dpo@psauthority.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.

This policy will be reviewed quarterly.