Privacy Notices - Recruitment of employees Privacy Notice

As part of the recruitment process, Swindon Borough Council collects and processes personal data relating to job applicants. The Council is committed to being transparent about how it collects and uses that data and to meeting its data protection obligations.

This Privacy Notice does not apply to the recruitment of casual workers. There is a separate Privacy Notice for the engagement of casual workers.

A Privacy Notice is a statement issued by an organisation which explains how personal and confidential data about individuals is collected, used and shared.

Swindon Borough Council collects a range of personal data about you during the recruitment process. This includes:

• Your name, address and contact details, driving licence details (if applicable) as well as email address and telephone number.
• Details of your qualifications, skills, experience, memberships and employment history.
• Data about your current level of remuneration, including benefit entitlements.
• Whether or not you have a disability for which the Council needs to make reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process.
• Equality data - to enable the Council to manage its legal requirements under the Equality Act 2010 (Public Sector Equality Duty).
• Employment and/or character reference details.
• Data about your entitlement to work in the UK.
• Data on unspent convictions.

For roles that involve children and / or adults, the Council will ask for data on convictions/disqualifications in accordance with the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974.

The Council collects this data in a variety of ways. For example, data might be contained in application forms, CVs, your passport or other identity documents, or collected through interviews or other forms of assessment.

We may also collect personal data about you from third parties, such as references by former employers. We will seek data from third parties only once a job offer to you has been made and will inform you that we are doing so. The only exception to this is the process for safeguarding requirements where references are requested for all shortlisted applicants prior to interview.

Personal data will be stored in a range of different places, including on your application record, your job account, within HR systems and on other IT systems (including email). Any paper-based documentation can be scanned and uploaded onto your application record.

The Council will need to process data to enter into a contract with you.

In some cases, we need to process personal data to ensure that we are complying with our legal obligations. For example, it is mandatory to check a successful applicant's eligibility to work in the UK before a formal offer is made.

Swindon Borough Council has a legitimate interest in processing personal data during the recruitment process and for keeping records of the process. Processing data from job applicants allows us to manage the recruitment process, assess and confirm a candidate's suitability for employment and decide to whom to offer a job. We may also need to process data from job applicants to respond to and defend against legal claims.

Swindon Borough Council may process special categories of data, such as equality data (for example race, disability, sexual orientation, gender religion, marital status) to monitor recruitment statistics and to enable the Council to manage its legal requirements under the Equality Act 2010 (Public Sector Equality Duty). This requires the Council to understand and act on how different equality groups are able to access different opportunities.

We may also collect data about whether or not applicants are disabled to make reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process for those who have a disability. We process such data to carry out our obligations and exercise specific rights in relation to employment.

If your application is unsuccessful, copies of your right to work in the UK documentation will be destroyed one month after the end of the recruitment process. All other recruitment documentation will be kept on file, securely, for six months.

Your Swindon Borough Council job account will remain active for two years from the date of your last job application unless you advise the Council otherwise. If you decide that your data is to be removed from the system please e-mail RecruitmentTeam@swindon.gov.uk.

Your data may be shared internally for the purposes of the recruitment process. This includes members of Human Resources & Organisational Development, the recruitment team, interviewers involved in the recruitment process and managers in the business area who owns the vacancy.

We will not share your data with third parties, unless your application for employment is successful and we make you an offer of employment. We will then share your data with former employers to obtain references for you, employment background check providers to obtain necessary checks for example Occupational Health. Applicants will input their own personal data to complete a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check where the nature of the role requires this.

We take the security of your personal data seriously. We have internal policies and controls in place to ensure that your personal data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by our employees in the proper performance of their duties.

If your application for employment is unsuccessful, the Council will hold your data on file for six months after the end of the relevant recruitment process. At the end of that period your data is deleted and / or destroyed in confidential waste. Copies of your right to work in the UK documentation will be destroyed one month after the recruitment process in confidential waste.

If your application for employment is successful, personal data gathered during the recruitment process will be transferred to Human Resources (electronic and paper based) and retained during your employment and for a further three years after your employment has ended. This will be in accordance with the Council’s Retention and Disposal Policy.

You have a number of rights. You can:

• access and obtain a copy of your data on request (Subject Access Request)
• require the Council to change incorrect or incomplete data
• require the Council to delete or stop processing your data, for example where the data is no longer necessary for the purposes of processing
• object to the processing of your data where the Council is relying on its legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact the Council’s Data Protection Officer, Civic Offices, Euclid Street, Swindon SN1 2JH or email DataProtection@swindon.gov.uk.

If you believe that the Council has not complied with your data protection rights, you can complain to the Information Commissioner at www.ico.org.uk.

Read the main Privacy Notice