Privacy Policy

London Councils Job Applications and Careers Site Privacy Notice

 

Information we collect directly from you

 

We have set out below the main categories of candidate personal data which we process in connection with our recruiting activities.  This may include:

  • personal contact information (including your name, home address, personal telephone number(s) and personal e-mail address)
  • work history and other relevant experience including information contained in CV, cover letter or job application form
  • education information including degrees awarded, transcripts and other information provided in support of the job application
  • pay/ remuneration history
  • information collected during phone screenings and interviews
  • details regarding the type of employment sought, desired salary, job preferences, and other information related to pay and benefits
  • reference information and information received from background checks (where applicable) including information provided by third parties
  • information related to previous applications to us or previous employment history with us
  • documents evidencing your right to work (including information about your immigration status where relevant)
  • responses to questions we put to you to obtain equal opportunities data
  • responses to skill, work and competency questions
  • responses to personality questions and aptitude tests.

 

We will ask you to provide information relating to protected characteristics, such as your gender, ethnicity, age range, disability status or sexuality. Providing this information is entirely optional, and you do so freely. Unless you are successful in your application for the role and give your consent to sharing the information with the hiring company, this information is always used solely for statistical and research purposes.

 

Under specific circumstances and where permitted by law, we may process criminal record data under the conditions provided in Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018. We will only process this data in a lawful and fair manner, and we will take appropriate security measures to protect it. We will never share the data with any third parties. We will not keep this data for any longer than necessary and will securely dispose of it once it is no longer needed. 

 

Registration Information: You will also be asked to set up a user account which will allow you to log into and out of the Platform. You may need to register a username and password to gain secure access to your account.

 

Other data you intentionally share: We may collect personal data if you submit it to us in other contexts. For example, if you provide us with a testimonial.

 

Information we automatically collect about you

 

Like many website operators, each time you visit the Platform we may automatically collect the following information:

Technical information: including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet, your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform.

 

Information about your visit: including the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from our site (including date and time); page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page.

 

Information we receive from others

 

Referral data: if you arrive on the Platform from an external source (such as a link on another website or in an email), we record information about the source that referred you to us

 

How do we use your personal information?

 

The majority of the personal data to be provided by you is mandatory in connection with our recruiting activities. Failure to provide mandatory personal data may affect our ability to accomplish the purposes stated in this Notice, including considering your suitability for employment and/or entering into an employment contract with you.

 

The majority of the personal data which we process will be collected directly from you.

 

However, your personal data may also be provided to us by third parties, such as recruitment agencies, former employers, official bodies (such as regulators or criminal record bureaus), medical professionals and/or or through selected third parties with whom NHG contracts in order to undertake checks or validations.

 

Referencing and Vetting

 

As part of our referencing and vetting procedures, we will contact certain third parties in order to verify your personal information (including personal information that you provide as part of the application and recruitment process). These third parties will include former employers in order to verify your previous employment history.

 

We will only seek this information in relation to successful candidates that have accepted a conditional offer of employment with us and we will specifically inform such candidates that we will be contacting these third parties in advance of doing so.

 

How do we use your Personal data?

 

London Councils uses your personal data for a variety of purposes in order to take steps necessary to enter into an employment contract with you, to comply with legal obligations or otherwise in pursuit of its legitimate interests UK data protection law. We have set out below the main purposes for which candidate personal data is processed:

  • to identify and evaluate job applicants, including assessing skills, qualifications and experience
  • verifying candidate information and carrying out employment, background and reference checks, where applicable and in order to prevent fraud
  • communicating with you about the recruitment process and your application
  • to comply with our legal, regulatory, or other corporate governance requirements.

 

In addition to using your personal data to consider you for the role you applied for, we will retain and process your personal data to inform you about, and to consider you for, other roles that may be appropriate for you. If you do not want us to consider you for other roles which we consider may be appropriate for you, you must delete your profile in our recruitment system.

 

Again, this list is not exhaustive, and London Councils may undertake additional processing of personal data in line with the purposes set out above. London Councils will update this Notice from time to time to reflect any notable changes in the purposes for which it processes your personal data.

 

What special categories of Personal data do we process?

 

Certain categories of data are considered "special categories of personal data" and are subject to additional safeguards. London Councils limits the special categories of personal data which it processes as follows:

  • Health Information

 

We may process information about a candidate's physical or mental health in compliance with our obligations owed to disabled employees.  Some of this information is collected during the course of the application process, including to enable us to identify any reasonable adjustments we may need to make during the application/recruitment process and to assess suitability for certain roles where there are applicable health and safety requirements we need to comply with.  This information is collected through questionnaires which candidates are asked to complete. 

 

We will always treat information about health as confidential and it will only be shared internally where there is a specific and legitimate purpose to do so. We have implemented appropriate physical, technical, and organisational security measures designed to secure your personal data against accidental loss and unauthorised access, use, alteration, or disclosure.

 

If a candidate is successful, any health information processed as part of the recruitment process that is relevant to London Councils compliance with its obligations in connection with employment will be retained and processed in accordance with the Employee Privacy Notice. 

 

If a candidate is unsuccessful, any health information obtained as part of recruitment process will be deleted or anonymised with the rest of the candidate's personal data within 12 months of their application.

  • Criminal Record Information

 

We may ask successful candidates who have accepted a conditional offer of employment to disclose their criminal record history and we carry out criminal record checks, including using vetting and checking agencies, as part of our background vetting process and in compliance with our obligations in connection with employment and, for certain parts of our business, to comply with regulatory and legal obligations.  In all cases, we carry out the checks in accordance with the applicable law.

 

We will always treat criminal record history as confidential and it will only be shared internally where there is a specific and legitimate purpose to do so. We have implemented appropriate physical, technical, and organisational security measures designed to secure your personal data against accidental loss and unauthorized access, use, alteration, or disclosure.

 

Criminal record information will be deleted once the recruitment process has been completed, subject to any exceptional circumstances and/or to comply with particular laws or regulations in which case criminal record information will typically be retained for a maximum of 12 months (unless we need to keep it for longer for legal purposes), although the outcome of any check will remain on the candidate's record.

  • Equal Opportunities Monitoring

 

London Councils is committed to providing equal opportunities for employment to all candidates and from time to time it will process information relating to ethnic origin, race, nationality, sexual orientation and disability, alongside information relating to gender and age, for the purposes of equal opportunities monitoring.

 

We have implemented appropriate physical, technical, and organisational security measures designed to secure your personal data against accidental loss and unauthorized access, use, alteration, or disclosure.  In addition, this monitoring will always take place in accordance with appropriate safeguards as required under applicable law, including:

  • the provision of information relating to ethnic origin, race, nationality, sexual orientation and disability for the purposes of monitoring will be voluntary and processed for this purpose only with your consent;
  • wherever possible, the monitoring will be conducted on the basis of using anonymised data so individual candidates cannot be identified;
  • the information processed for monitoring purposes will be maintained separately from general management and HR records.

 

When do we share Employee Personal data?

 

London Councils will share candidate/prospective employee personal data with other parties only in limited circumstances in order to take steps necessary to enter into the employment contract or where necessary to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation, or otherwise in pursuit of London Councils legitimate business interests as follows:

  • recruitment agencies
  • background vetting specialists
  • occupational health providers
  • HMRC and/or any other applicable government body
  • accountants, lawyers and other professional advisers
  • appropriate regulatory agencies.
  • managed service providers

 

In all cases, with the exception of information which we are required to provide to regulatory agencies, the candidate/prospective employee personal data is shared under the terms of a written agreement between London Councils and the third party which includes appropriate security measures to protect the personal data in line with this Notice and our obligations.

 

The third parties are permitted to use the personal data only for the purposes which we have identified, and not for their own purposes, and they are not permitted to further share the data without our express permission. 

 

Do we need consent to process your Personal data? 

 

We do not need your consent if we use your personal data or sensitive personal data in accordance with our rights and obligations in the field of employment and social security law.

 

For how long will my Personal data be retained? 

 

London Councils policy is to retain personal data only for as long as needed to fulfil the purpose(s) for which it was collected, or otherwise as required under applicable laws and regulations.  Under some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data so that it can no longer be associated with you.  We reserve the right to retain and use such anonymous data for any legitimate business purpose without further notice to you.

 

For unsuccessful candidates:

  • We will typically retain personal data collected during the recruitment process for a maximum period of 12 months from the start of the process subject to any exceptional circumstances and/or to comply with particular laws, regulations or regulatory requirements.
  • We may retain select data relating to particular candidates on file for a longer period than 6 months in order to follow up with the candidates in relation to future vacancies; if you do not wish for your personal data to be maintained on file for this purpose, you must delete your profile from our recruitment system. 
  • We will typically retain personal data held in archived e-mails or other electronic files for 12 months from the start of the recruitment process.

 

If you are offered and accept employment with us, the personal data we collected during the application and recruitment process will become part of your employment record and we may use it in connection with your employment in accordance with the Employee Privacy Notice.

 

Transfers outside of the UK

 

Occasionally, we may need to transfer your personal data outside UK or the to other subcontractors or agents. For example, if we were to use an IT service whose servers are situated outside of the UK. Where this is the case, we will take the appropriate steps to ensure that we only contract with organisations that have the appropriate security measures in place.

 

Any personal data transferred to countries or territories outside the UK will only be placed on systems complying with measures giving equivalent protection of personal rights either through appropriate international agreements or contracts approved by in line with UK data protection law.

 

What are my rights in relation to my Personal data?  

 

London Councils will always seek to process your personal data in accordance with its obligations and your rights.

 

You will not be subject to hiring decisions based solely on automated data processing without your prior consent.

 

In certain circumstances, you have the right to seek the erasure or correction of your personal data, to object to particular aspects of how your data is processed, and otherwise to seek the restriction of the processing of your personal data. You also have the right to request the transfer of your personal data to another party in a commonly used format. If you have any questions about these rights, please contact London Councils Data Protection Officer using the details set out below. 

 

You can email dataprotection@londoncouncils.gov.uk if you have any questions or concerns about how your information is used.

 

Finally, you have the right to raise any concerns about how your personal data is being processed by London Councils with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) by going to the ICO's website: https://ico.org.uk/concerns/ or contacting the ICO on 0303 123 1113.