Recruitment privacy notice
Who is the data controller for the information I provide?
Liverpool City Council is the data controller for the information that you provide.
Why we collect your data
As part of its recruitment process, we collect, processes and store personal information about you in order to assess your application, perform pre-employment screening and comply with employment law and other legal obligations.
By signing up for our job alerts, you are consenting for us to contact you with relevant opportunities. You can opt out at any time by contacting us.
What is the legal basis for collecting and processing this data?
- Contract: Processing your data is necessary to move your application forward before signing a contract of work. This concerns employment or pre-employment checks.
- Legal obligation: The law requires GDS to check that candidates are entitled to work in the UK.
- Public task: When we carry out National Security vetting for some roles, we have to process personal data to perform a task that’s in the public interest or in the exercise of our official authority.
- Processing criminal convictions and sensitive information: We collect, use and hold sensitive information such as criminal convictions on the lawful bases of contract, legal obligation and public task.
Information we may collect
We collect the following information about you:
- Basic personal information including name, address and contact details
- Work history, including previous employers, positions, dates, etc
- Education history, including professional qualifications and skills
- Nationality/right to work information (e.g. passport, National Insurance Number)
- Results of any tests you complete as part of the recruitment process
- Any other information you provide during the recruitment process
- Certain information considered “sensitive”, including information about your health, criminal record, sexuality, religious beliefs and ethnic origin
We also collect information from certain third parties as part of the pre-employment screening process, including:
- Contacting your referees to obtain a reference
- Conducting criminal record checks, where appropriate
- Checking your driving licence information with the DVLA, where driving is essential to your role
- Checking professional membership and/or registration
- Obtaining medical clearance via our occupational health service
By completing the referees section of your conditional offer of employment, you are consenting for us to contact your referees to obtain a reference prior to your employment with us. You have the right to withdraw this consent at any time, but this will potentially affect any offer of employment we have made to you.
Do you have to provide this information, and what will happen if you don't?
You do not have to provide any of the information we ask for, but it may adversely affect your application and offer of employment if you don’t.
Who will your information be shared with?
The software we use for recruitment is called TalentLink. This means that your personal data is processed by TalentLink (the ‘data processor’) on behalf of Liverpool City Council, following the instructions we set out.
We sometimes need to pass basic personal information (e.g. your name and address) to your referees, or to criminal records’ disclosure services (including the Disclosure and Barring Service), in order to carry out pre-employment screening checks. It may also be passed onto your direct line manager, for operational purposes.
We will never contact your referees until you have been offered and verbally accepted a role with us.
We will not share your information with anyone else unless we are required to do so by law.
How long will you keep this information for?
If your application for employment is unsuccessful, your application is retained for a maximum of 12 months and then destroyed.
If you are offered a position with us, we will retain your application form, references and any other information relevant to your continuing employment with us on your permanent employee record, which is kept for the purpose of administering your continuing employment with us. Your permanent employee record will then be held for six years from your leaving date.
Equal Opportunities information is used for statistical monitoring purposes which is not related to named individuals and will be anonymised after it has been collected.
There’s often a legal and/or contractual reason for keeping your personal information for a set period of time, we try to include all of these in our retention policy.
For each council service a retention schedule lists how long your information may be kept. For contracts that we deliver, retention periods form part of that specific contract.
Please see What we do with your data for the council's full retention schedule.
You can request more information on contractual retention periods relevant to you at any time.
How will my information be stored?
The information you provide will be stored electronically.
We’ll do what we can to make sure we hold records about you in a secure way, and we’ll only make them available to those who have a right to see them. Examples of our security include:
- Encryption, meaning that information is hidden so that it cannot be read without special knowledge (such as a password). This is done with a secret code or what’s called a ‘cypher’. The hidden information is said to then be ‘encrypted’.
- Controlling access to systems and networks allows us to stop people who are not allowed to view your personal information from getting access to it.
- Training for our staff allows us to make them aware of how to handle information and how and when to report when something goes wrong.
- Regular testing of our technology and ways of working including keeping up to date on the latest security updates (commonly called patches).
Will this information be used to take automated decisions about me?
No.
Will my data be transferred abroad?
No.
What rights do I have when it comes to my data?
You have a number of rights that are set out on the How to access your data page of this section.
Where can I get advice?
View our Help and advice page for more information.