Guidance

Cabinet Office annual Civil Service employment survey privacy notice

Updated 7 April 2022

1. Your data

1.1 Purpose

The purpose(s) for which we are processing your personal data are:

• to report on civil service employment and composition including by employer, location, pay and diversity as part of the annual “Civil Service Statistics” National Statistics publication
• to provide the Cabinet Office with a robust evidence base to enable it to deliver on its responsibility of creating an exceptional Civil Service, improving its capability and effectiveness. This includes:
   
  • designing, implementing and evaluating cross-Civil Service workforce policies, including estimates of any associated workforce costs
  • monitoring diversity and equality information including representation and pay and reporting it both internally as well as in the public domain
  • to report and publish management and statistical information in a non-identifiable aggregated format including diversity monitoring information
  • to monitor and report management and statistical information to officials across the Civil Service and for use in the public domain including diversity monitoring information
  • providing analysis and evidence for professional and functional leads across the Civil Service for those staff in their professions/functions
  • to monitor and understand the career paths of different groups through the Civil Service
  • to identify particular skills and experience to aid in workforce planning and to facilitate the targeting of talent management or other development initiatives
  • to analyse patterns of attrition for different groups within the Civil Service
  • For cross-Civil Service workforce planning purposes
  • to monitor the effectiveness and competitiveness of Civil Service reward packages
  • to enable Cabinet Office, senior officials and Ministers to respond to government select committees, Parliamentary questions, freedom of information requests, and other bodies
  • to support the National Audit Office in meeting its objective of accountability of public service and public service improvement
  • to support the Office for Budget Responsibility in its economic and fiscal forecasting of the UK public finances
  • support the Cabinet Office in its management of the Civil Service compensation scheme

1.2 The data

We will process the following personal and sensitive personal data:

• your unique identifier used by your employer - depending on your employer this may or may not be your employee number
• your employer
• the postcode (or location) of your place of work. If you are a contractual homeworker only the local administrative unit code (LAU 1) of where your home address is located is processed.
• your contractual home worker status – determined by the use of an LAU 1 code instead of a postcode for the location of your place of work if you are contractual homeworker (see above)
• your grade
• your grade on entry to the civil service
• your pay, including:
  1) gross salary
  2) total value of any allowances you receive
  3) total value of any non-consolidated performance related pay you receive
  4) total value of any salary sacrifice deductions you receive
• your date of birth
• your sex
• your national identity
• your profession of post
• your working pattern (full-time or part-time)
• your full-time equivalency
• the number of hours you are conditioned to work weekly
• the dates that you entered:
  1) the civil service
  2) your department
  3) your current grade
• the date you left the department
• your appointment status at the department (permanent, temporary/casual, secondment and loan)
• your reason for leaving the department e.g. resigned, transfer to another government department sensitive personal data
• your answers to socio-economic background (SEB) questions, specifically:
  1) the type secondary school you attended
  2) the highest qualification of your parent(s) when you were aged 18
  3) the type of work and the employment category of your parent(s) when you were aged 14
  4) the number of employees working for your parent(s) employer (or in the organisation that your parent(s) ran) when you were aged 14
  5) whether your parent(s) supervised other employees when you were aged 14
  6) whether you were eligible for free school meals during your school years
  7) whether you feel you come from a higher or lower SEB in relation to others

Sensitive personal data:

• your ethnicity
• your disability status
• your sexual orientation
• your religion or belief

1.3 Legal basis of processing

The legal basis for processing your personal data is:

• Processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the data controller. In this case that the Cabinet Office has responsibility for creating an exceptional Civil Service, improving its capability and effectiveness, and for the publication of National Statistics on the composition of the Civil Service workforce.

Sensitive personal data is personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation.

The legal basis for processing your sensitive personal data is:

• it is necessary for the purposes of identifying or keeping under review the existence or absence of equality of opportunity or treatment between groups of people with a view to enabling such equality to be promoted or maintained (paragraph 8, schedule 1, DPA 2018)
• processing is necessary for statistical and research purposes in accordance with Article 89(1) based on the duties in the Equality Act 2010 (See GDPR Article 9(2)(j))
• it is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest for the exercise of a function of the Crown, a Minister of the Crown, or a government department; the exercise of a function conferred on a person by an enactment. The Cabinet Office requires your information to monitor and report on equality and diversity across the entire civil service and for the publication of the annual “Civil Service Statistics” National Statistics bulletin.

1.4 Recipients

Your personal data will be shared by Cabinet Office with:

• approved analysts at the National Audit Office when undertaking studies on the Civil Service and Civil Service workforce

We will also share anonymised, aggregate or summary data with other public bodies, and we may publish this, but it will not allow any individuals to be identified. Summary and aggregated data will also be published as part of the annual Civil Service Statistics National Statistics bulletin.

Your sensitive personal data is not shared beyond approved analysts within the Cabinet Office except with approved analysts at the National Audit Office when undertaking equality studies of the Civil Service.

As your personal data will be stored on our IT infrastructure, it will also be shared with our data processors who provide email, document management and storage services.

Where you did not provide your personal data

Where you did not provide your personal data, it was provided by the department or public body that employs you.

1.5 Retention

Your information will be kept for seven years and after this period retention will be reviewed annually.

2. Your rights

You have the right:

• to request information about how your personal data are processed, and to request a copy of that personal data
• to request that any inaccuracies in your personal data are rectified without delay
• to request that any incomplete personal data are completed, including by means of a supplementary statement
• to request that your personal data are erased if there is no longer a justification for them to be processed
• in certain circumstances (for example, where accuracy is contested), to request that the processing of your personal data is restricted
• to object to the processing of your personal data where it is processed for direct marketing purposes
• to object to the processing of your personal data

3. International transfers

As your personal data is stored on our IT infrastructure, and shared with our data processors who provide email, and document management and storage services, it may be transferred and stored securely outside the European Economic Area. Where that is the case it will be subject to equivalent legal protection through the use of Model Contract Clauses.

4. Complaints

If you consider that your personal data has been misused or mishandled, you may make a complaint to the Information Commissioner, who is an independent regulator. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Telephone: 0303 123 1113
casework@ico.org.uk

Any complaint to the Information Commissioner is without prejudice to your right to seek redress through the courts.

5. Contact details

The data controller for your personal data is the Cabinet Office. The contact details for the data controller are:

Cabinet Office
70 Whitehall, London
SW1A 2AS

Public Enquiries: Online Contact Form

The Data Protection Officer provides independent advice and monitoring of Cabinet Office’s use of personal information.

The contact details for the data controller’s Data Protection Officer are: dpo@cabinetoffice.gov.uk