Privacy Notice for Job Applicants

Our Other Privacy Notices

Updated: 01/07/2024

What is the purpose of this document?

The Company is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information.

This privacy notice describes how we collect and use personal information about you. It provides you with certain information that must be provided under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

You are being sent a copy of this privacy notice because you are applying for work with us (whether as an employee, worker or contractor).

The Company is a "data controller". This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We are required under data protection legislation to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.

The Company’s contact details are: Stonbury Limited (company number 01721842). Registered Office: Chawston House, Chawston Lane, Chawston, Bedfordshire, MK44 3BH. Telephone: 01234 750924.

Data protection principles

We will comply with data protection law. This says that the personal information we hold about you must 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.

The kind of information we hold about you

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

There are "special categories" of more sensitive personal data which require a higher level of protection.

We will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:

The information you or a recruitment agent have provided to us in your curriculum vitae and any covering letter.
The information you have provided on any application form, including name, title, address, telephone number, and personal email address, date of birth, gender, employment history, qualifications, and referee details.
Any information you provide to us during any interview or assessment/tests.

We may also collect, store and use the following "special categories" of more sensitive personal information:

Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and political opinions.
Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records.

How is your personal information collected?

We collect personal information about job applicants through the application and recruitment process, either directly from candidates or sometimes from an employment agency/recruitment provider. We may sometimes collect additional information from third parties including former employers.

How we will use information about you

We will only use your personal information we collect about you to:

Assess your skills, qualifications, and suitability for the role/work;
Carry out background and reference checks, where applicable;
Communicate with you about the recruitment process;
Keep records related to our recruitment processes;
Comply with legal or regulatory requirements.
Making a decision about your recruitment or appointment.
Determining the terms on which you work for us.
Checking you are legally entitled to work in the UK.

It is in our legitimate interests to decide whether to appoint you to a role since it would be beneficial to our business to do so. Having received your CV and/or covering letter and/or any applicable application form 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 your application is strong enough 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. We may also make use of assessments/tests during any selection process and use information from that to help us make recruitment decisions. If we decide to offer you the role, we will take up references.

If you fail to provide personal information

If you fail to provide information when requested, which is necessary for us to consider your application, we may not be able to process your application successfully. This may mean that we are unable to take your application further.

How we use particularly sensitive personal information

“Special categories” of particularly sensitive personal information require higher levels of protection. This information includes the following information: racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetic/biometric data, health, sex life or sexual orientation.

We will use special categories of 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 we need to make adjustments for the interview or any assessment.
We will use information about your race or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical beliefs, or your sex life or sexual orientation, to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting.

Automated decision-making

Automated decision-making takes place when an electronic system uses personal information to make a decision without human intervention. We are allowed to use automated decision-making in the following circumstances:

Where we have notified you of the decision and given you 21 days to request a re-consideration.
Where it is necessary to perform the contract with you and appropriate measures are in place to safeguard your rights.

You will not be subject to decisions that will have a significant impact on you based solely on automated decision-making, unless we have a lawful basis for doing so and we have notified you.

Data sharing

We may have to share your data with third parties for the purposes of processing your application. For recruitment purposes, those third parties are likely to be recruitment consultants/agencies if we have received your application through such consultants/agents.

We may also share your information (in a limited way) with our group companies.

We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law.

What about other third parties?

We may share your personal information with other third parties, for example in the context of the possible sale or restructuring of the business. We may also need to share your personal information with a regulator or to otherwise comply with the law.

Data security

We have put in place measures to protect the security of your information. Details of these measures are available upon request.

Third parties will only process your personal information on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to keep it secure.

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

How long will you use my information for?

If we do not recruit you but have obtained personal information from you for the purposes of a recruitment process, we will retain your personal information for a period of 6 months after we have communicated our decision. We retain this 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, unless you ask us to hold your personal data for longer, we will securely destroy your personal information in accordance with our data protection policy and any policies on retention of personal information.

If we do recruit you we will retain the personal information relating to your application (CV, application form, interview assessment/notes, tests etc) and hold this in your personnel file for the period of your employment/engagement. Such information will be removed from your file after the termination of your employment/engagement in accordance with our data protection policy and any policies on retention of personal data. If you become an employee, worker, or consultant with the Company, we will issue you with a separate Privacy Notice at that point which will explain what personal information we will retain regarding you whilst you remain employed or engaged by us.

Your individual rights

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 Chris Phillips SHWEQ and Compliance Advisor.

No fee usually required

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

Right to withdraw consent

In the limited circumstances where we have relied on your consent for the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose (which will be rare), you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact Chris Phillips SHWEQ and Compliance Advisor, dpo@stonbury.co.uk. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.

Person responsible for data protection in the Company

We have appointed Chris Phillips SHWEQ and Compliance Advisor 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 Chris Phillips. The Company can be contacted by writing to: The Data Protection Officer, Stonbury Limited, Chawston House, Chawston Lane, Chawston, Bedfordshire, MK44 3BH. You also have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues.

Changes to this privacy notice

We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.

If you have any questions about this privacy notice, please contact Chris Phillips, SHWEQ and Compliance Officer Stonbury Limited, Chawston House, Chawston Lane, Chawston, Bedfordshire, MK44 3BH or dpo@stonbury.co.uk