Recruitment and applicant privacy notice
To be able to serve you effectively City of Lincoln Council need to be able to collect, hold and use your personal data.
As part of any recruitment process, the City Of Lincoln 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.
What information does the organisation collect?
The Council collects a range of information about you. This includes
- your name, address and contact details, including email address and telephone number;
- details of your qualifications, licences, professional memberships, skills, experience, personal development and employment history;
- referencing information
- information about your criminal record
- information about whether you are related to another employee of the council or councillor
- whether or not you have a disability for which the organisation needs to make reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process
- information about your entitlement to work in the UK; and
- equal opportunities monitoring information, including information about your ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health and religion or belief.
The Council may collect this information in a variety of ways. For example, data might be contained in application forms, CVs or resumes, obtained from your passport or other identity documents, or collected through interviews or other forms of assessment, including online assessments.
The Council may also collect personal data about you from third parties, such as references supplied by former employers and information from criminal records checks. The Council will seek information from third parties only once a conditional job offer has been made.
Data will be stored in a range of different places, including on your application record, in HR recruitment system/file and on other IT systems including email.
Why does the organisation process personal data?
The organisation needs to process data to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract with you. It may also need to process your data to enter into a contract with you.
In some cases, the organisation needs to process data to ensure that it is complying with its legal obligations. For example, it is required to check a successful applicant's eligibility to work in the UK before employment starts.
The 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 the organisation to manage the recruitment process, assess and confirm a candidate's suitability for employment and decide to whom to offer a job. The Council may also need to process data from job applicants to respond to and defend against legal claims.
The Council may process information about whether or not applicants are disabled to make reasonable adjustments for candidates who have a disability. This is to carry out its obligations and exercise specific rights in relation to employment.
The Council processes other special categories of data, such as information about ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health or religion or belief, this is for equal opportunities monitoring purposes.
For some roles, the Council is obliged to seek information about criminal convictions and offences. Where the organisation 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.
The organisation will not use your data for any purpose other than the recruitment exercise for which you have applied and equal opportunities reporting. If your application is unsuccessful, the Council may keep your personal data on file for a period of 6 months for monitoring purposes.
Who has access to data?
Your information may be shared internally for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. This includes members of the HR and recruitment team, interviewers involved in the recruitment process, managers in the business area with a vacancy and IT staff if access to the data is necessary for the performance of their roles.
The organisation will not share your data with third parties, unless your application for employment is successful and it makes you an offer of employment. The organisation will then share your data with former employers to obtain references for you, employment background check providers to obtain necessary background checks and the Disclosure and Barring Service to obtain necessary criminal records checks.
The organisation will not transfer your data outside the European Economic Area.
How does the organisation protect data?
The organisation takes the security of your data seriously. It has internal policies and controls in place to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by our employees in the proper performance of their duties.
For how long does the organisation keep data?
If your application for employment is unsuccessful, the organisation will hold your data on file for 6 months after the end of the relevant recruitment process. At the end of that period or once you withdraw your consent, your data is deleted or destroyed.
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. The periods for which your data will be held will be provided to you in an employee privacy notice.
Your rights
As a data subject, you have a number of rights. You can:
- access and obtain a copy of your data on request;
- require the organisation to change your data if incorrect or incomplete;
- require the organisation to delete or stop processing your data, for example where the data is no longer necessary for the purposes of processing; and
- object to the processing of your data where the organisation is relying on its legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing.
If you would like to exercise any of these rights or if you want to know more about your rights relating to the personal data we hold about you or you have a complaint regarding the way we have handled your personal information please contact our Data Protection Officer using the contact details to the right of this page.
If however you remain unhappy, then you have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner by visiting their website here.
What if you do not provide personal data?
You are under no statutory or contractual obligation to provide data to the organisation during the recruitment process. However, if you do not provide the information, the organisation may not be able to process your application properly or at all.
Legal exemption
Please note that in circumstances the Council will be unable to provide any information where a legal exemption applies. Examples of exemptions include Legal advice, and information such as confidential employment and character references.
Automated decision-making
Recruitment processes are not based solely on automated decision-making.
