Data Controller
Personal information will be processed by us, Newtown St Boswells, TD6 0SA.
You can contact Human Resources by:
- phone: 01835 825052
- email: hrteam@scotborders.gov.uk
Data Protection Officer
Our Data Protection Officer is Nuala McKinlay, who can be contacted by:
- phone: 0300 100 1800
- email: dataprotection@scotborders.gov.uk
How we will use your information
We will use your personal information to manage the employment relationship between you and us. We are committed to being transparent about how we collect and use that data and to meeting our data protection obligations.
What information we collect
we collect and process a range of information about you.
This includes:
- Your name, address and contact details, including personal and work e-mail address and telephone number, date of birth and gender.
- The terms and conditions of your employment.
- Your place of employment.
- Details of your qualifications, skills, experience and employment history, including start and end dates, with previous employers and with us.
- Information about your remuneration, including entitlement to benefits such as pensions or insurance cover.
- Details of your bank account and national insurance number.
- Information about your marital status, next of kin, dependants and emergency contacts.
- Information about your entitlement to work in the United Kingdom
- Information about your criminal record.
- Details of your working hours, normal days of work and attendance at work.
- Details of periods of leave taken by you, including holidays, sickness absence, family leave (including maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental leave), special leave and sabbaticals, and the reasons for that leave.
- Details of any disciplinary or grievance procedures in which you have been involved, including any warnings issued to you and related correspondence.
- Assessments of your performance including appraisals, Performance Review and Development records, 1:1 or supervision records, training you have participated in, performance improvement plans and related correspondence.
- Information about medical or health conditions, including whether or not you have a disability for which we need to make reasonable adjustments.
- Details of trade union membership. (Only if you request that we deduct your union subscriptions at source and only to allow us to make the correct deductions and pass them on to your union.)
- Details of other deductions that you request us to make from your salary.
- Details of deductions we are obliged to make as a matter of law.
- Equal opportunities monitoring information, including information about your ethnic origin, nationality, sexual orientation, transgender, health, religion or belief and if you are a carer. (Only with your consent)
How we collect this information
We collect this information in a variety of ways, for example from details submitted in your application for employment, obtained from documents submitted by you as proof of your right to work in the United Kingdom such as your passport and driving licence, from forms completed by you at the start of or during your employment such as benefit nomination forms, from correspondence with you, through interviews, meetings or other assessments or from information entered by you directly into our HR system.
We also obtain information from third parties, such as references provided by former employers and information from PVG or Disclosure Scotland checks where permitted by law.
Why we collect this information
We collect and uses this information because it needs to process data to enter into an employment contract with you and to meet its obligations under your employment contract.
For example, it needs to process your data to provide you with an employment contract, to pay you in accordance with that contract and to administer benefits, pensions and insurance entitlements.
In some cases we need to process data to ensure we are complying with our legal obligations.
For example we are required to check an employee’s entitlement to work in the United Kingdom, to deduct tax, to comply with health and safety laws and to enable employees to take periods of leave to which they are entitled.
For certain positions it is necessary to carry out PVG checks to ensure that individuals are permitted to carry out the role.
For certain other positions, where allowed by law, it is necessary to carry out PVG or Disclosure check to ensure an individual is suitable for that role.
We require to process data regarding deductions we are legally obliged to make to comply with our legal obligations.
We require to process data regarding deductions you have asked us to make to comply with your instructions.
In other cases, we have a legitimate interest in processing personal data before, during and after the end of the employment relationship. Processing employee data allows us to:
- Run recruitment and promotion processes;
- Maintain accurate and up-to-date employment records and contact details (including details of who to contact in the event of an emergency), and records of employee contractual and statutory rights;
- Operate and keep a record of disciplinary and grievance processes, to ensure acceptable conduct within the workplace;
- Operate and keep a record of employee performance and related processes, to plan for career development, and for succession planning and workforce management purposes;
- Operate and keep a record of absence and absence management procedures, to allow effective workforce management and ensure that employees are receiving the pay or other benefits to which they are entitled;
- Obtain occupational health advice, to ensure that we comply with duties in relation to individuals with disabilities, meet our obligations under health and safety law, and ensure that employees are receiving the pay or other benefits to which they are entitled;
- Operate and keep a record of other types of leave (including maternity, paternity, adoption, parental, shared parental leave and other special leave), to allow effective workforce management, to ensure that we comply with duties in relation to leave entitlement, and to ensure that employees are receiving the pay or other benefits to which they are entitled;
- Ensure effective general HR and business administration;
- Provide references on request for current or former employees;
- Respond to and defend against legal claims,
- Maintain and promote equality in the workplace and
- Contact and arrange to deploy staff where required for the purposes of business continuity.
Where we rely on legitimate interests as a reason for processing data, we have considered whether or not those interests are overridden by the rights and freedoms of employees or workers and concluded that they are not.
Some special categories of personal data, such as information about health or medical conditions, are processed to carry out employment law obligations (such as those in relation to employees with disabilities and for health and safety purposes).
Information about trade union membership is processed (with the consent of the employee) to allow the organisation to operate check-off for union subscriptions.
Other special categories of personal data, such as information about ethnic origin, nationality, sexual orientation, transgender, health, religion or belief and if you are a carer, are processed for the purposes of equal opportunities monitoring and to fulfil our legal duties to report on equalities.
Data that we use for equalities purposes is collected with the express consent of employees, which can be withdrawn at any time. Employees are entirely free to decide whether or not to provide such data and there are no consequences of failing to do so.
Data about criminal convictions or offences is processed to ensure that individuals are permitted to carry out the role or, where allowed by law, it is necessary to ensure an individual is suitable for that role.
How long will we keep your data?
We retain employment data in accordance with the Scottish Council on Archives Records Retention Schedules (SCARRS). See our Resources Retention Schedules.
Data about criminal convictions or offences from Disclosure or PVG checks is retained for as long as is necessary to allow an informed decision to be made about an individual’s suitability for a role and destroyed immediately thereafter.
Who we may share your information with
Your information will be accessed by our staff who need to use it in order to allow the performance of the employment contract and to carry out the tasks described above.
Your information may be shared with the following third party organisations:
Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs – to comply with our legal obligations to make appropriate deductions for income tax and national insurance and to ensure that you pay the correct amount.
Pension Fund – to comply with our obligation to make appropriate employee and employer contributions to the Fund and to ensure that you receive the correct pension benefits when appropriate.
Scottish Public Pensions Agency - to comply with our obligation to make appropriate employee and employer contributions to the Fund and to ensure that you receive the correct pension benefits when appropriate.
People Asset Management OH Solutions - to fulfil our obligations under the employment contract and our duty of care to you as an employee, including (such as those in relation to employees with disabilities and for health and safety purposes).
Professional organisations or governing bodies – where registration or membership is required to allow you to perform the role.
We will share your data with other organisations insofar as necessary to comply with any deductions from salary you instruct us to make.
We are legally obliged to safeguard public funds so details will be checked internally for fraud prevention and verification purposes and may be shared with other public bodies for the same purpose.
We will also share your data with other third party obligations when legally obliged to do so.
We may share your data with our professional advisors to obtain advice and defend or pursue legal claims.
Your information may also be shared and analysed internally in order to provide management information, inform service reform and similar purposes to meet our duty to achieve best value and continuous service improvement.
In general we do not transfer personal data outside either the UK or the European Economic Area (EEA) and on the rare occasions when we do so we will inform you. We will only transfer data outside the UK and the EEA when it is satisfied that the party which will handle the data and the country it is processing it in will provide adequate safeguards for personal privacy.
Your rights
Option 1
You have the right to request access to any personal data held about you by us. You can also request that we restrict the use of your information or even object to any further processing. You can do this by contacting the Data Protection Officer using the contact details provided above. We will respond to your request within thirty calendar days.
For more information on your rights please visit our website or if you would like a hard copy of this information, please contact us using the contact details provided above.
Option 2
For information on the rights you have over your personal data, please visit our website or if you would like a hard copy of this information, please contact us using the contact details provided above.
How to raise a complaint
Option 1
If you are unhappy with the way we have processed your personal data please contact the Data Protection Officer. If after raising your concerns with the Data Protection Officer you remain dissatisfied you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office by:
- post: 45 Melville Street, Edinburgh, EH3 7HL
- phone: 0131 244 9001
- email: scotland@ico.org.uk
Option 2
Please visit our website for information on how to raise a complaint if you are unhappy with the way we haveprocessed your data.
Decision-Making
We do not use profiling or automated decision-making processes. Some processes are semi-automated (such as anti-fraud data matching) but a human decision maker will always be involved before any decision is reached in relation to you.