Privacy notice for job applicants - Social Arts for Education

Aims

Social Arts for Education is committed to preserving your privacy. As a personal data controller,we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal data about you. This notice is aimed at informing you of how and why your personal data will be used, namely for the purposes of the recruitment exercise, and how long it will be retained for. It provides you with certain information that must be provided under the General Data Protection Regulation ((EU) 2016/679) (GDPR) and the local data protection law.

Data Protection Principles

We will comply with data protection law and principles, which means that your 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.
Maintained only for as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about, i.e. in relation to the recruitment exercise.
Kept securely and protected against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against loss or destruction using appropriate technical and organisational measures.

What data will we collect and hold about you?

In connection with your application, we will collect, use and store the following categories of personal data about you:

The personal data contained in your supporting letter.
The data you have provided on our application form, including name, title, home address, telephone number, personal email address, employment history, qualifications, skills, educational achievements, and any data you provide us during interviews at our premises.
Your current level of remuneration
Information about your entitlement to work in the UK
Information about any disabilities you may have for which Social Arts for Education needs to make reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process
Information on any medical conditions you may have (this will be collected after a role has been offered and accepted)
Data provided by you on our equal opportunities form, including information about your ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health and religion or belief.
Any personal data provided to us about you by your referees
Information about any criminal convictions you may have

How is your personal data collected?

We collect personal data about candidates from the following sources:

You, the candidate, from whom we will obtain data from application forms, self disclosure forms, CVs, your passport or other identity documents, or through interviews or other forms of assessment.
Your named referees, from whom we collect the following categories of data: full name, periods of previous employment, performance during previous employment and whether they have any reason to believe you are not suitable to work with children.
From employment background check providers, such as criminal records bureau checks, from whom we will obtain details of any convictions you have received.

Social Arts for Education will seek information from third parties only once a provisional job offer to you has been made, and will inform you that it is doing so before making any enquiries about you.

Self disclosure forms will be required for applicants who progress to offer, in addition to criminal records bureau checks. The rationale behind this is as follows:

It allows us to ask relevant questions about an applicant’s background and experience that do not feature in the DBS process
It facilitates the applicant to sign to confirm a wider range of consents and agreements than a DBS application form (e.g. a commitment to inform the employer if the applicant is subsequently arrested or investigated in relation to safeguarding concerns; agreement to comply with safeguarding policies and a code of conduct)
It clarifies that consent is given to the organisation taking steps to clarify information arising on a DBS disclosure
It confirms understanding that the organisation may share information with other organisations if this is considered necessary to safeguard children

Due to the nature of the work at Social Arts for Education, we feel it is vital to our safeguarding procedures to take this extra precaution.

How we will use the data we collect

We will use the personal data we collect about you to:

Assess your skills, qualifications, and suitability for the role.
Ensure we comply with the Equality Act by providing any reasonable adjustments you may require
Carry out background and reference checks.
Communicate with you about the recruitment process.
Keep records related to our recruitment processes.
Comply with our legal obligations. For example, it is required to check a successful applicant’s eligibility to work in the UK before employment starts, or to check an applicant’s details against DBS Barred Lists.

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 a suitable candidate to that role.

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

Having received your application and covering letter, we will then process your data to decide whether you meet the basic requirements to be shortlisted for the role. If you do, we will decide whether your application is suitable to invite you for an interview. If we decide to call you for an interview, we will use the data you provide to us at the interview to decide whether to offer you the role. If we decide to offer you the role, we may then take up references and/or any other check before confirming your appointment.

Social Arts for Education will not use your data for any purpose other than the recruitment exercise for which you have applied.

Social Arts for Education relies on legitimate interests as a reason for processing data, and has considered whether or not those interests are overridden by the rights and freedoms of employees or workers and has concluded that they are not.

If you fail to provide personal data

If you fail to provide personal data when requested, which is necessary for us to consider your application (such as evidence of qualifications or work history), we may not be able to process your application further. 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 data

We will use your sensitive personal data only in so far as we are permitted by Law to do so :

We will use data about your disability status or any medical needs 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 data about your right to work in the UK to assess whether a work permit and a visa will be necessary for the role, or whether additional background checks may be necessary
Where Social Arts for Education processes other special categories of data, such as information about ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health or religion or belief, this is purely for equal opportunities monitoring purposes.
We will use data about any criminal convictions you have to assess your suitability to work with children, in order to ensure we meet our safeguarding obligations

Social Arts for Education is obliged to seek information about criminal convictions and offences for all roles within the organisation. Where Social Arts for Education seeks this information, it does so because it is necessary for it to carry out its obligations and exercise specific rights in relation to employment.

Data Sharing

Your information will be shared internally for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. This includes members of the HR department, interviewers involved in the recruitment process, managers in the department with a vacancy and IT contractors if access to the data is necessary for the performance of their roles.

Social Arts for Education will not share your data with third parties, unless your application for employment is successful and it makes you an offer of employment. Should you be offered a role, we will share your data with our DBS checking service, but will provide to them only the information necessary to perform a Criminal Records Bureau check.

Data Security and Storage

Your data will be stored in a range of different places, including on your application record, in HR management systems and on other IT systems (including email).

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees and third parties who have a business need-to-know. They will only process your personal data on our specific instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. Details of these measures may be obtained from our data protection policy.

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.

Social Arts for Education will not transfer your data outside the European Economic Area.

Data retention

If your application for employment is successful, personal data gathered during the recruitment process will be transferred to your personnel file and retained during your employment. If you are unsuccessful, we will retain your personal data for 6 months. We retain your personal data 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. We further retain such personal data in case a similar role becomes vacant for which you will be a fitting candidate. After this period, we will securely destroy your personal data in accordance with our data retention policy.

Your rights in connection with personal data

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data corrected.
Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data 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 data where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
Object to processing of your personal data 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 data for direct marketing purposes.
Request the restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal data about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
Request the transfer of your personal data to another party.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please email us or write to us at 253 Eltham High Street, London SE9 1TY.

Data Protection Officer

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 data, please contact the DPO on 0208 850 3286 or at info@safeschoolbexley.co.uk. You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office, who are the UK’s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest. They can be contacted on 0303 123 1113.