Data controller: Proclaim Care Limited (“Proclaim”, “Company”, “we”, and “our”)

Data protection officer (“DPO”): Thorntons Law LLP, dataprotection@proclaim-group.co.uk

This privacy notice applies to our applicants. As part of any recruitment process, Proclaim collects and processes personal data relating to job applicants. Proclaim is committed to being transparent about how it collects and uses that data and to meeting its data protection obligations.

What Information Does Proclaim Care Collect?

Proclaim collects a range of information about you. This includes: 

• Your name, address and contact details, including email address and telephone number;
• Details of your qualifications, skills, experience and employment history or other information on a CV, application form, cover letter or as part of the application process;
• Information about your current level of remuneration, including benefit entitlements;
• Whether or not you have health, religious or other needs for which Proclaim needs to make reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, which may take the form of a medical declaration;
• Equalities monitoring information including your ethnicity;
• Information arising from financial checks (for finance roles);
• Information about your identity and entitlement to work in the UK;
• Any criminal data relating to you arising from criminal record checks;
• Any information about you if you are barred from working with vulnerable groups (including children);
• References;
• Proof of Professional Registration (if required);
• Evidence of appropriate car insurance cover to include business travel (where applicable);
• If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence;
• Information you provide us within our safer recruitment self disclosure form; 
• Any information you provide to us or which we collect during the recruitment process and/or the interview; and
• CCTV footage.

Proclaim may collect 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. We may also conduct our interviews through Microsoft Teams. 

Proclaim may also collect personal data about you from third parties, such as Job Advertising Specialists, references supplied by former employers, information from employment background check providers, Experian for checks in relation to finance, and information from criminal records checks (in England this would be from the Disclosure and Barring Service and in Scotland this would be from Disclosure Scotland). Proclaim will seek information from third parties only once a job offer to you has been made and will inform you that it is doing so.

Data will be stored in a range of different places, including on your application record, internal shared data network and on other IT systems (including email). All information will be held in the UK.

Why Does Proclaim Care Process Personal Data?

We will use the personal information we collect about you to:

• Assess your skills, qualifications, and suitability for the role you have applied for or for other roles.
• To enhance any information that we receive from you with information obtained from third party data providers.
• To verify your identity and carry out background and reference checks, where applicable.
• To verify that candidates are suitable. 
• Communicate with you about the recruitment process.
• Keep records related to our hiring processes.
• Comply with legal or regulatory requirements.

Proclaim needs to process data to take steps at your request prior to entering into an employment contract with you. It may also need to process your data to enter into an employment contract with you.

In some cases, Proclaim 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 or to comply with a legal obligation under Equality Act 2010.

Proclaim has a legitimate interest in processing personal data during the recruitment process and for keeping records of the processand/or for legitimate interests pursued by us to promote a diverse workforce. Processing data from job applicants allows Proclaim to manage the recruitment process, assess and confirm a candidate’s suitability for employment and decide to whom to offer a job. Proclaim may also need to process data from job applicants to respond to and defend against legal claims.

Proclaim may process information about whether or not applicants are disabled or have other requirements to make reasonable adjustments for candidates. This is to carry out its obligations and exercise specific rights in relation to employment.

Proclaim has a legitimate interest in processing personal data collected via CCTV with such interest being security of premises, business, visitors and staff.

Proclaim will not use your data for any purpose other than for the recruitment exercise for which you have applied or as otherwise explained in this privacy notice.

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. For example, if we require a background check or references for this role and you fail to provide us with relevant details, we will not be able to take your application further.

How We Use Particularly Sensitive Personal Information

We will use information about your disability or religious status to consider whether we need to provide appropriate adjustments during the recruitment process, for example whether adjustments need to be made to the interview.

Where the information we process is special category data, for example your health data, the additional bases for processing that we rely on are: 

• In limited circumstances, with your explicit written consent.
• Where it is necessary for the purposes of carrying out our obligations and exercising our rights in employment and the safeguarding of your fundamental rights.
• Where it is necessary for reasons in the public interest, such as for equal opportunities monitoring.

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.

In addition, we rely on processing conditions at Schedule 1, Part 1, paragraph 1(1)(a) and Schedule 1, Part 2 paragraph 8(1) (a) and (b)of the Data Protection Act 2018. These relate to the processing of special category data for employment purposes. We do so in accordance with our Appropriate Policy Document. 

Information About Criminal Convictions

We will collect information about your criminal convictions history if we would like to offer you the role (conditional on checks and any other conditions, such as references, being satisfactory). We are entitled to carry out a criminal records check in order to satisfy ourselves that there is nothing in your criminal convictions history that makes you unsuitable for the role or barring you from working with vulnerable groups (including children). In particular, Proclaim as a business works with vulnerable people and so we will require to obtain a disclosure of your criminal records history.

We are allowed to use your personal data in this way because it is necessary for legitimate interests pursued by us and it:

• Is necessary for the purposes of performing or exercising obligations or rights which are imposed or conferred by law on the controller or the data subject in connection with employment, social security, or social protection. (Paragraph 1(1)(a), Schedule 1, DPA 2018.)
• Meets one of the substantial public interest conditions set out in Part 2 of Schedule 1 to the DPA 2018 (such as protecting the public against dishonesty, malpractice or improper conduct) (Paragraph 11(1), Schedule 1, DPA 2018) or safeguarding of children and individuals at risk (Paragraph 18, Part 2, Schedule 1 of the DPA 2018).

We have in place an Appropriate Policy Document and safeguards which we are required by law to maintain when processing such data.

Who Has Access to Data?

Your information may be shared internally for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. This includes members of the HR and recruitment 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.

Proclaim will not share your data with third parties, except for limited information with any recruitment agency representing you and/or unless your application for employment is successful and it makes you an offer of employment. Proclaim will then share your data with former employers to obtain references for you, employment background check providers to obtain necessary background checks and the Disclosure and Barring Service or Disclosure Scotland to obtain necessary criminal records checks.

When Might You Share My Personal Information With Other Entities in the Group?

We will share your personal information with our subsidiary, Obair Associates Limited if necessary as part of our regular reporting activities on company performance and shared HR function or in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise.

How Does Proclaim Care Protect Data?

Proclaim 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 Proclaim Care Keep Data?

If your application for employment is unsuccessful, Proclaim will hold your data on file for 12 months after the end of the relevant recruitment process. At the end of that period, your data is deleted or destroyed.  

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 employee privacy notice.

Your Rights Over Your Data

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

Should you need to contact us in respect of your personal rights, please contact the Data Protection Officer.

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.

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.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

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 dataprotection@proclaim-group.co.uk. 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. Any withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of our processing up to the point of withdrawal.

We reserve the right to update this Privacy Notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new Privacy Notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact:

Data Protection Officer 
Email: dataprotection@proclaim-group.co.uk

You also have the right to refer any concerns you may have regarding Proclaim Care Limited’s use of your information to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) – more information can be found by visiting the ICO’s website at: www.ico.org.uk.

Last reviewed: May 2024