Applicants for employment - privacy notice
This section of our privacy notice applies to all individuals who apply for a position at Homes England.
Applies to England
Documents
Details
It is important that you read this section of our privacy notice together with the main section of our privacy notice above, or any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you. This is so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data.
Information we collect
Homes England collects personal data about applicants through the application and recruitment process, either directly from candidates or sometimes from an employment agency or background check provider. We may sometimes collect additional information from third parties including former employers, credit reference agencies or other background check agencies.
We will collect additional personal information in the event that your application to Homes England is successful. After you start work, your information will be processed in accordance with our employee privacy notice, a copy of which will be provided to you with your offer letter.
We will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal data about you:
- Personal contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, and personal email addresses.
- Date of birth
- Gender
- Copies of right to work documentation (evidence to demonstrate your entitlement to work in the United Kingdom)
- References or other information that you may have included in a CV or cover letter or application form
- Records of your previous employment (including job titles, work history, working hours, training records and professional memberships and salary details)
How we process your information
We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances:
- To process your application and to help us decide whether to make an offer of employment to you.
- Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.
- Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:
- Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests).
- Where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes.
We may process your data for the following purposes:
- Making a decision about your recruitment or appointment.
- National Security Vetting and BPSS checking.
- Determining the terms on which you work for us.
- Checking you are legally entitled to work in the UK.
- To prevent and detect fraud.
- To conduct data analytics studies (such as recruitment trends) to review and better understand the profile of candidates who apply to us; and who amongst them are successful.
- Equality and diversity monitoring.
Some of the above grounds for processing will overlap and there may be several grounds which justify our use of your personal information.
How we process “special categories” of more sensitive personal information
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.
- Trade union membership (only where you have mentioned this in your application eg where you list being a union representative in “positions of responsibility”).
- Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness including pre-employment screening.
- Biometric data.
- Information about criminal convictions and offences.
These “special categories” of particularly sensitive personal information require higher levels of protection. We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal information. Our data protection policy contains details of the safeguards which we are required by law to maintain when processing such data.
We may process special categories of personal information in the following circumstances:
- Where we need to carry out our legal obligations or exercise rights in connection your application. For example, we will use information about your physical or mental health, or disability status, to ensure your health and safety in the workplace and to assess your fitness to work, to provide appropriate workplace adjustments, to monitor and manage sickness absence and to administer benefits; or
- Where it is needed in the public interest: for example, we will use information about your race or national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, or your sexual life or sexual orientation, to ensure meaningful equality and diversity monitoring and reporting.
- In limited circumstances, with your explicit written consent. However, we do not need your consent to use special categories of your personal information in accordance with our written policy to carry out our legal obligations or exercise specific rights in the field of employment law. In limited circumstances, we may approach you for your written consent to allow us to process certain particularly sensitive data. If we do so, we will provide you with full details of the information that we would like and the reason we need it, so that you can carefully consider whether you wish to consent. You should be aware that it is not a condition of any offer of employment with us that you agree to any request for consent from us.
- Less commonly, we may process this type of information where it is needed in relation to legal claims or where it is needed to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent, or where you have already made the information public.
We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so. Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the rules mentioned above, where this is required or permitted by law.
Who is the information shared with
We may share your data with third parties, including third-party service providers and other Government departments and agencies.
We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law.
We may transfer your personal information outside the EU. If we do, you can expect a similar degree of protection in respect of your personal information.
Retention
Homes England will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected. Unsuccessful applicants’ personal data will usually not be stored for longer than six months from the date of application.
In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you. If you accept an offer of employment with us then our employee privacy notice will govern how we process your personal information. Records will be retained and destroyed in accordance with our records retention schedule, which you will be able to access from our intranet.