Harlow Council has a legal obligation to collect both personal and sensitive personal information from you in order to fulfil its duty as an employer.
Without collecting and processing the information the council could not offer a contract of employment in the first instance or continue to do so unless certain information is collected, updated and processed.
The following informs you of what data we hold, why we hold it, why it is processed and how long we will hold it for.
Why are we collecting your personal information?
As an employer Harlow Council has a number of legal obligations that we must fulfil, such as our duty to protect the health, safety and welfare of our employees under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. In order to comply with our legal obligations, we will collect and process your personal information under Article 6 (1)(c) and any sensitive personal information under Article 9(2)(b) of the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR).
Who will we share your personal information with?
We may share your personal information where we have a legal obligation to do so, in order to protect your vital interests in ‘life or limb’ situations or for the purposes of occupational medicine (occupational health) with the relevant contracting health professional used by the council. Your personal information may also be shared between our services and with other official organisations, such as the police and other government bodies.
Third parties with whom information about staff may need to be shared by the council:
- HMRC, or Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to meet statutory reporting obligations
- external pensions providers to administer staff pensions
- occupational health
- the council’s employee benefit and well being providers
- Social Work England Disclosure and Barring Service to obtain criminal record checks for certain roles
- law enforcement agencies for the prevention or detection of crime
- external auditors
- legal advisors to the council and court of law as necessary
- emergency response services as necessary to protect your vital interests or those of another person
- Public Health England or any appropriately designated body, when we are requested to do so
- Social Work England
- yhird parties who carry out aspects of processing on our behalf for employees voluntary deductions from monthly pay via the payroll, such as Plane Saver Credit Union (PSCU)
- the council’s insurance brokers and insurers and related third parties (for example, lawyers and loss adjustors for the purpose of risk mitigation, securing insurance cover, maintaining and administering that cover and processing any claims that may arise as a result)
- independent investigators who are instructed to carry out a specific investigation in line with our policies and procedures
- HR and payroll management systems including third party platforms and on other IT systems (including email)
How long will we keep your personal information?
As we are collecting your personal information in order to comply with our various legal obligations as an employer, each obligation will determine how long we must keep your personal information for.
Where internal forms are used, each form will tell you how long the personal information will be kept for. Alternatively, information can be found within our records retention policy, and specifically within the Human Resources document retention schedule.
Where we no longer require your personal information or the retention period for it has expired, your personal information will be securely destroyed.
For more information on how we collect, use and protect personal information generally, as well as your rights as a data subject please view our main privacy notice.