Your Personal Data– Privacy Notice

This notice explains what personal data (information) we will hold about you, how we collect it, and how we will use and may share information about you during the application process. We are required to notify you of this information, under data protection legislation. Please ensure that you read this notice (sometimes referred to as a ‘privacy notice’) and any other similar notice we may provide to you from time to time when we collect or process personal information about you.

1. Who collects the information?

Oxbow Partners Limited (‘we”) are a ‘data controller’.  This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you.  We are on the Information Commissioner’s Office’s register of data controllers under number: ZA155900.

2. Data protection principles

We will comply with data protection law. This says that the personal information we hold about you must be:

1. Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
2. Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
3. Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
4. Accurate and kept up to date.
5. Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
6. Kept securely.

3. The kind of information we collect and hold about you

We may collect the following information up to and including the shortlisting stage of the recruitment process:

• Your name and contact details (i.e. address, home and mobile phone numbers, email address);
• Details of your qualifications, experience, employment history (including job titles, salary and working hours) and interests;
• Details of your referees.

We may collect the following information after the shortlisting stage, and before making a final decision to recruit:

• Information about your previous academic and/or employment history, including details of any conduct, grievance or performance issues, appraisals, time and attendance, from references obtained about you from previous employers and/or education providers;
• Information regarding your academic and professional qualifications;
• Your nationality and immigration status and information from related documents, such as your passport or other identification and immigration 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.
• Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records.
• Information about criminal convictions and offences.

4. How is your personal information collected?

We collect personal information about you through the application and recruitment process, either directly from you 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.

5. How we will use information about you

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:

1. Where we need to perform the contract we have entered into with you.
2. Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.
3. 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.

Change of purpose

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 above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

How we use particularly sensitive personal information

“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. We may process special categories of personal information in the following circumstances:

1. In limited circumstances, with your explicit written consent.
2. Where we need to carry out our legal obligations and in line with our Information Security and Data Protection policy.
3. Where it is needed in the public interest, such as for equal opportunities monitoring and in line with our Information Security and Data Protection policy.
4. Where it is needed to assess your working capacity on health grounds, subject to appropriate confidentiality safeguards.

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 use your particularly sensitive personal information in the following ways:

• 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 equal opportunity monitoring and reporting.

Do we need your consent?

We do not need your consent if we 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.

Information about criminal convictions

We may only use information relating to criminal convictions where the law allows us to do so. This will usually be where such processing is necessary to carry out our obligations and provided we do so in line with our Information Security and Data Protection policy.  Less commonly, we may use information relating to criminal convictions where it is necessary in relation to legal claims, where it is necessary 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.

Where appropriate, we will collect information about criminal convictions as part of the recruitment process or we may be notified of such information directly by you in the course of you working for us.

6. Data sharing

We may also need to share some of the above categories of personal information with other parties, such as HR consultants, recruitment agencies, professional advisers and talent acquisition software providers. The recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations. We may also be required to share some personal information as required to comply with the law.

7. Data security

We have put in place measures to protect the security of your information.   In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know.  Third parties will only process your personal information on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to keep it secure.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

8. Data retention

We keep the personal information that we obtain about you during the recruitment process for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which it is processed. How long we keep your information will depend on whether your application is successful and you become employed by us, the nature of the information concerned and the purposes for which it is processed.

We will keep recruitment information (including interview notes) for no longer than is reasonable, taking into account the limitation periods for potential claims such as race or sex discrimination (as extended to take account of early conciliation), after which they will be destroyed. If there is a clear business reason for keeping recruitment records for longer than the recruitment period, we may do so but will first consider whether the records can be pseudonymised, and the longer period for which they will be kept.  If you have consented, we will keep your recruitment records for the purposes of contacting you about future vacancies.

If your application is successful, we will keep only the recruitment information that is necessary in relation to your employment.

9. Your duty to inform us of changes

It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes.

10. Your rights in connection with personal information

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

• Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
• Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
• Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground.
• Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
• Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.

If you want to do any of the above, please contact us in writing.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.

Right to withdraw consent

In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact us. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.