Privacy Notice
Privacy Notice for Recruitment
As part of any recruitment process, the Arts Council England collects and processes personal data relating to job applicants. Arts Council England is committed to being transparent about how it collects and uses that data and to meeting its data protection obligations.
What information does the organisation collect?
The organisation collects a range of information about job applicants. This includes:
- your name, address and contact details, including email address and telephone number;
- details of your qualifications, skills, experience and employment history;
- information about your current level of remuneration, including benefit entitlements;
- whether or not you have a disability for which the organisation needs to make reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process;
- information about your entitlement to work in the UK; and
- equal opportunities monitoring information, including information about your ethnic origin, sexual orientation, and religion or belief.
Arts Council England collects this information in a variety of ways. For example, data might be contained in application forms, CVs or resumes, obtained from your passport or other identity documents, or collected through interviews or other forms of assessment, including online tests.
Arts Council England will also collect personal data about you from third parties, such as references supplied by former employers. The organisation will seek information from third parties only once a job offer to you has been made.
Data will be stored in a range of different places, including on your application record, in HR management systems and on other IT systems (including email).
Why does Arts Council England process personal data?
Arts Council England needs to process data to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract with you. It also needs to process your data to enter into a contract with you.
In some cases, the organisation needs to process data to ensure that it is complying with its legal obligations. For example, it is required to check a successful applicant's eligibility to work in the UK before employment starts.
Arts Council England has a legitimate interest in processing personal data during the recruitment process and for keeping records of the process. Processing data from job applicants allows the organisation to manage the recruitment process, assess and confirm a candidate's suitability for employment and decide to whom to offer a job. The organisation may also need to process data from job applicants to respond to and defend against legal claims.
Where the organisation relies on legitimate interests as a reason for processing data, it has considered whether or not those interests are overridden by the rights and freedoms of employees or workers and has concluded that they are not.
Arts Council England processes health information if it needs to make reasonable adjustments to the recruitment process for candidates who have a disability. This is to carry out its obligations and exercise specific rights in relation to employment.
Some of the information you provide to us may be sensitive personal data, such as information about ethnic origin, sexual orientation, religion or belief, age, gender or marital status. This is collected for the purposes of equal opportunities monitoring with the explicit consent of job applicants, which can be withdrawn at any time.
If your application is unsuccessful, Arts Council England may keep your personal data on file in case there are future employment opportunities for which you may be suited. The organisation will ask for your consent before it keeps your data for this purpose and you are free to withdraw your consent at any time.
Who has access to data?
Your information will be shared internally for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. This includes members of the HR team, interviewers involved in the recruitment process, managers in the business area with a vacancy and IT staff if access to the data is necessary for the performance of their roles.
The organisation may share your data with third parties, where there are external interview panel members. You will be notified if any members of an interview panel are not Arts Council employees when you are invited to attend an interview. Your application form will be shared with those interview panel members for the purpose of them preparing for an interview and they will be required to dispose of this information following the completion if the interview process. The organisation may share your data with third parties, where the organisation has employed a recruitment agency as a third party organisation to shorlist applications for a role. Your application form will be shared with the recruitment agency for the purpose of shortlisting only and they will be required to dispose of this information following the completion of the shortlisting process. Your data will not be shared with any other third parties, unless your application for employment is successful and it makes you an offer of employment. The organisation will then share your data with former employers to obtain references for you.
The organisation will not transfer your data outside the European Economic Area.
How does Arts Council England protect data?
Arts Council England takes the security of your data seriously. It has internal policies and controls in place to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by our employees in the proper performance of their duties.
For how long does Arts Council England keep data?
We will apply the following time periods:
- Unsuccessful applications will be archived after 365 days
- Inactivity of account will be archived after 365 days
- If you job application status is incomplete, withdrawn or did not confirm this will be archived after 91 days
If you withdraw your consent at any point, your data will be deleted.
If your application for employment is successful, personal data gathered during the recruitment process will be transferred to your personnel file and retained during your employment. The periods for which your data will be held will be provided to you in a new privacy notice.
Your rights
As a data subject, you have a number of rights. You can:
- access and obtain a copy of your data on request;
- require the organisation to change incorrect or incomplete data;
- require the organisation to delete or stop processing your data, for example where the data is no longer necessary for the purposes of processing;
- object to the processing of your data where the organisation is relying on its legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing; and
- ask the organisation to stop processing data for a period if data is inaccurate or there is a dispute about whether or not your interests override the organisation's legitimate grounds for processing data.
If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please email FOI@artscouncil.org.uk.You can make a subject access request by completing the organisation's form for making a subject access request.
If you believe that the organisation has not complied with your data protection rights, you can complain to the Information Commissioner.
What if you do not provide personal data?
You are under no statutory or contractual obligation to provide data to the organisation during the recruitment process. However, if you do not provide the information, the organisation may not be able to process your application properly.
You are under no obligation to provide information for equal opportunities monitoring purposes and there are no consequences for your application if you choose not to provide such information.
Automated decision-making
Recruitment processes are not based solely on automated decision-making.