Hastoe Group is a "controller" in relation to personal data. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. This privacy notice applies to you because you are applying for work with us (whether as an employee, worker or contractor). This notice makes you aware of how and why your personal data will be used, namely for the purposes of the processing your application, 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 (UK GDPR).
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.
- Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
- Kept securely.
WHAT INFORMATION WE HOLD ABOUT YOU
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 covering letter.
- The information you have provided on our application form (where applicable), including name, title, address, telephone number, personal email address, date of birth, gender, employment history, qualifications, professional memberships.
- Any information you provide to us during an interview.
- Personal data contained in your personality profile (if generated in the course of your application).
We may also collect, store and use the following types of more sensitive personal information:
- Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and political opinions (where applicable).
- Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records.
- Information about criminal convictions and offences.
HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL DATA COLLECTED?
We collect personal information about candidates from the following sources:
- You, the candidate.
- Any recruitment agency that we may be using in relation to your recruitment.
- Experian or any background check provider that Hastoe may use in future.
- Disclosure and Barring Service in respect of criminal convictions.
- Your named referees.
- Publicly accessible source.
HOW WILL WE USE INFORMATION ABOUT YOU?
We will use the personal information we collect about you to:
- Assess your skills, qualifications, and suitability for the role to which you are applying.
- Carry out background and reference checks, where applicable.
- Communicate with you about the recruitment process.
- Keep records related to our hiring processes.
- Comply with legal or regulatory requirements.
It is in Hastoe’s legitimate interests to use your data for the purpose of deciding whether to appoint you to the role.
We also need to process your personal information to decide whether to enter into a contract of employment/agreement for services with you.
Having received your CV and/or covering letter and/or your application form and the results from any tests which form part of our recruitment process, 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 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 to offer you the role. If we decide to offer you the role, we will then take up references, carry out a criminal record and carry out a background check with Experian 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 may not be able to process your application successfully. For example, if we require a degree certificate for this role and you fail to provide us with relevant details, we may not be able to take your application further.
HOW WE USE SENSITIVE / SPECIAL CATEGORY INFORMATION
We will use your particularly sensitive personal information 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; or
- We will use information about your race, nationality, ethnicity, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, or your sexual life or sexual orientation, to provide meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting.
INFORMATION ABOUT CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS
We envisage that we will process information about criminal convictions.
We will collect information about your criminal convictions history if we would like to offer you the role (conditional on checks and any other conditions, such as references, being satisfactory). We are entitled to carry out a criminal records check in order to satisfy ourselves that there is nothing in your criminal convictions history which makes you unsuitable for the role.
We have in place appropriate policies and safeguards which we are required by law to maintain when processing such data.
AUTOMATED DECISION-MAKING
Hastoe does not utilise automated decision making in our recruitment processes.
WHEN WE MAY SHARE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION WITH THIRD PARTIES
We will only share your personal information with the following third parties for the purposes of processing your application:
- Experian (and any other background check provider that Hastoe may use in the future);
- Human Resources Information System;
- Personality profile providers; and
- Other third party recruitment partners that we may use from time to time.
All of our third-party service providers and other entities in the group are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information. 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 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.
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.
DATA RETENTION
We will retain your personal information for a period of between 1 and 6 years (depending on the type of data) after we have communicated to you our decision about whether to appoint you to the role. We retain your personal information 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. After this period, 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 a further 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.
If you wish to know more about long we retain your data for, please contact Hastoe’s Data Protection Officer (details below)
YOUR RIGHTS IN RELATION TO YOUR 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 Hastoe’s Data Protection Officer (details below).
HASTOE’S 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 information, please contact Hastoe’s DPO using the details below:
Secretariat Department
Hastoe Housing Association Limited
Marina House
17 Marina Place
Hampton Wick
Kingston upon Thames
Surrey
KT1 4BH
Get in touch with our DPO.
You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) who is responsible for data protection issues in the UK.
