Privacy Notices - Recruitment of volunteers Privacy Notice

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

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

Swindon Borough Council is the data controller (contact details below). This means it decides how your personal data is processed and for what purposes.

Personal data relates to a living individual who can be identified from that data. Identification can be by the information alone or in conjunction with any other information in the data controller’s possession or likely to come into such possession. The processing of data is governed by the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (the “GDPR”).

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

• Your name, address, contact details and driving licence details (if applicable).
• Proof of identity.
• Photograph of you with your proof of identity visible in the photograph.
• 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.

For roles that involve children and / or adults, the Council will ask for data on any 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, your passport or other identity documents.

We may also collect personal data about you from third parties, such as references. We will only seek data from third parties once a volunteer offer has been made and we will inform you that we are doing so.

Swindon Borough Council complies with its obligations under the GDPR by keeping personal data up to date; by storing and destroying it securely; by not collecting or retaining excessive amounts of data; by protecting personal data from loss, misuse, unauthorised access and disclosure and by ensuring that appropriate technical measures are in place to protect personal data.

We need your personal data in order to manage your volunteer application.

In some cases, we need to process personal data to ensure that we are complying with our legal obligations.

Swindon Borough Council has a legitimate interest in processing personal data during the volunteer recruitment process and for keeping records of the process. Processing data from volunteer applicants allows us to manage their recruitment process, assess and confirm a candidate's suitability for volunteer opportunities and decide to whom to offer a opportunity.

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 volunteer 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 volunteer application is unsuccessful, copies of identification 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 data may be shared internally for the purposes of the volunteer recruitment process. This includes with members of the Human Resources & Organisational Development team, the recruitment team, interviewers involved in the recruitment process and managers in the business area managing the volunteer vacancy.

We will not share your data with third parties, unless your application to be a volunteer is successful and we make you an offer. We will then share your data with former employers to obtain references for you, background check providers to obtain necessary checks, for example Occupational Health. Applicants may be asked to provide their Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) certificate number, 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 a volunteer opportunity is unsuccessful, the Council will hold your data on file for six months after the end of the recruitment process. At the end of that period your data will be securely deleted and / or destroyed. Copies of your identification documentation will be securely destroyed one month after the end of the volunteer recruitment process.

If your application for a volunteer opportunity is successful, personal data gathered during the recruitment process will be transferred to Human Resources (electronic and paper based) and retained during your deployment and for a further three years after your deployment 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 e-mail 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.

You are under no statutory obligation to provide your personal data to Swindon Borough Council during the volunteer recruitment process. However, if you do not provide your data, we may not be able to process your application properly, or at all.

A yearly audit will take place on personal data to ensure that we remain legally compliant in accordance with current data protection legislation.

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