Guidance

Home Secretary Commendation: privacy information notice

Published 12 August 2022

August 2022

Personal data

Privacy notice

The Home Secretary’s Commendation scheme recognises acts of outstanding service or bravery contributing to home affairs. Those awarded with a Commendation certificate will be celebrated as success stories on the Home Office pages of Gov.uk.

Those eligible for nomination includes: civil servants; members of Police services in England and Wales, Fire services in England, and Home Office Arm’s Length Bodies; and members of the public. Nominations are invited from employees of the Home Office and our Arm’s Length Bodies, with each candidate referred for validation to the relevant Senior Civil Servant at Director level.

The Commendation is awarded directly by the Home Secretary, and we complete due diligence checks on nominees who are not civil servants so that we have some understanding of the background of potential recipients.

Your personal information, supplied for the purposes of the Home Secretary Commendation will be held and processed by the Home Office. The Home Office is the controller of this information. We are based at 2 Marsham Street, London SW1P 4DF.

How and why we are using your information

Data we will collect

We will collect, process and share your personal information in order to operate the Commendation scheme. We will only do this where there is a lawful basis for doing so.

The legal basis relied on by us for processing your personal data in relation to your nomination is a legitimate interest. The legitimate interest is being able to consider you for a Home Secretary Commendation following a review of your nomination and appropriate due diligence.

The legal basis relied on by us for processing your personal data in relation to awarding you the Commendation certificate and also publicising your award is consent. You will be asked for your consent to receive the Commendation and for this to be made public.

Nomination

Short nomination forms will capture personal data of the person being put forward for a Commendation and also the person nominating them.

We will process the nominator’s following personal data:

• First name
• Last name
• Job title
• Civil Service grade
• Home Office directorate and team
• Email address

We will process the following data relating to the nominees (as provided to us by the nominators):

• Title
• First name
• Last name
• Profession
• Email address
• Phone Number
• Address
• Reason for nomination

Due diligence

As part of the due diligence checks on nominees who are not civil servants we will conduct a light-touch background search of publicly available online information. The result of the background check will form part of the recommendation to the Home Secretary but will be balanced with the reason for nomination.

This check will be limited to the following searches where we have a legitimate interest to view the information.

Internet search:

• Interviews or statements made to online media organisations.

• Local or national news coverage.

• Professional and academic publications.

Social media search:

• Information you have made public through your publicly available social media profiles (private content will not be searched).

• Information you have published on websites, blogs or other online publications.

Financial and probity search:

• Data published in public databases about you that may indicate unsuitable behaviour. The databases are the disqualified directors register, the remove trustees register and the financial services register.

Purpose

The purpose of processing this personal data is to allow the Home Secretary to issue Commendation certificates to those suitable for award. This includes the ability for:

• Employees of the Home Office and our Arm’s Length Bodies to make a nomination.

• Home Office senior civil servants to validate each nomination.

• Conducting due diligence on your nomination so that we can check the reason why you have been put forward for a Commendation and if there any adverse indicators of your suitability

• Nominations to be considered against the award criteria and a recommendation made to the Home Secretary.

If you are successful, we will contact you to confirm your details and ask for your consent to receive the Commendation certificate and also for your award to be published on Gov.uk.

Storing your information

All personal data processed as part of the nomination and consideration process will be treated confidentially.

All information will be stored securely in Home Office systems and not shared with third parties unless required to by law. We will keep details of Commendation awards considered by the Home Secretary for 5 years, in line with departmental retention policies. The information will then be deleted from Home Office systems.

More details of the Home Office retention policy can be found at of this policy can be found at Home Office retention and disposal standards - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

Requesting access to your personal data

You have the right to request access to the personal information the Home Office holds about you. Details of how to make the request can be found at Home Office - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

You also have the right to object to and ask to restrict our use of your personal information, and to ask us to rectify or delete your personal information.

Where you have given consent for your Commendation to be published on Gov.uk, you have the right to withdraw this consent and we will remove the information.

Questions or concerns

Contact

If you have any questions or concerns about the collection, use or disclosure of your personal information please contact the Home Office at:

Direct Communications Unit
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF
Telephone: 020 7035 4848

Email: public.enquiries@homeoffice.gov.uk

The Home Office also has a data protection officer who can be contacted at:

Office of the DPO
Home Office
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF
Telephone: 020 7035 6999

Email: dpo@homeoffice.gov.uk

More information about the ways in which the Home Office may use your personal information, including the purposes for which we use it, the legal basis, and who your information may be shared with can be found in the Home Office personal information charter: Personal information charter - Home Office - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Complaints

You have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office about the way we are handling your personal information.

The Office of the Information Commissioner
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Telephone: 0303 123 1113

Website: Information Commissioner’s Office