What is the purpose of this page?
Buckinghamshire & Milton Keynes Fire Authority (we/us) is a “controller” in relation to personal data.
This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you.
You are being made aware of this privacy notice because you are applying for work with us (whether as an employee, worker or contractor).
It makes you aware of how and why your personal data will be used, namely for the purposes of the recruitment exercise, and how long it will usually be retained for.
It provides you with certain information that must be provided under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).
Data protection principles
We will comply with data protection law and principles, which means that your data will be:
- Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way
- Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes
- Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
- Accurate and kept up to date
- Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about
- Kept securely
The kind of information we hold about you
In connection with your application for work with us, we will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:
- The information you have provided to us in your application form and/or curriculum vitae and covering letter
- The information you have provided on our application form, including name, title, address, telephone number, personal email address, date of birth, gender, employment history, qualifications
- Any information you provide to us during an interview
- Any information collected during any assessment process
We may also collect, store and use the following types of more sensitive personal information:
- Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, and sexual orientation
- Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records
- Information about criminal convictions and offences
How is personal information collected?
We collect personal information about candidates from the following sources:
- You, the candidate or applicant
- Recruitment/placement agencies in respect of your application/appointment
- Disclosure and Barring Service in respect of criminal convictions
- Your named referees
How we will use information about you
We will use the personal information we collect about you to:
- Assess your skills, qualifications, and suitability for the work or role
- Carry out background and reference checks, where applicable
- Communicate with you about the recruitment process
- Keep records related to our hiring processes
- Comply with legal or regulatory requirements
It is in our legitimate interests to decide whether to appoint you to a role since it would be beneficial to our business to appoint someone to that role.
We also need to process your personal information to decide whether to enter into a contract of employment or contract for services with you.
If you fail to provide personal information
If you fail to provide information when requested, which is necessary for us to consider your application (such as evidence of qualifications or work history), we will not be able to process your application successfully.
How we use particularly sensitive personal information
We will use your particularly sensitive personal information in the following ways:
- We will use information about your disability status to consider whether we need to provide appropriate adjustments during the recruitment process, for example whether adjustments need to be made during an assessment process or interview
- 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
Information about criminal convictions
We envisage that we may need to process information about criminal convictions.
We have in place an appropriate policy document and safeguards which we are required by law to maintain when processing such data.
Data sharing
Why might you share my personal information with third parties?
We will only share your personal information with the following third parties for the purposes of processing your application:
- Buckinghamshire Council for an initial Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) and subsequent renewals should you be employed. A DBS check will not be required for all roles and applicants will be advised during the recruitment process where this is applicable
- Occupational Health for pre-employment health screening
All our third-party service providers are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
Data security
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. 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. They will only process your personal information on our instructions, and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. Details of these measures may be obtained from Human Resources.
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.
Data retention
How long will you use my information for?
We will retain your personal information for a period of 12 months after we have communicated to you our decision about whether to appoint you to the role. We retain your personal information for that period so that we can show, in the event of a legal claim, that we have not discriminated against candidates on prohibited grounds and that we have conducted the recruitment exercise in a fair and transparent way. After this period, we will securely destroy your personal information in accordance with our data retention policy and applicable laws and regulations.
If we wish to retain your personal information on file, on the basis that a further opportunity may arise in future and we may wish to consider you for that, we will write to you separately, seeking your explicit consent to retain your personal information for a fixed period on that basis.
Rights of access, correction, erasure, and restriction
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. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes
- 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 review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please send your request to HR@bucksfire.gov.uk.
