Privacy notice - Employment records
Overview
During the course of its employment activities, East Sussex County Council collects, stores and processes personal information about prospective, current and former staff.
This privacy notice covers employees (and former employees), workers (including agency, casual and contracted staff), volunteers, trainees and those carrying out work experience.
East Sussex County Council takes data protection seriously. Please be assured that your information will be used appropriately in line with data protection legislation, will be stored securely and will not be processed unless the requirements for fair and lawful processing can be met.
What information is being used?
In order to carry out our activities and obligations as an employer we handle data in relation to:
- personal demographics (including gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion)
- contact details such as names, addresses, telephone numbers and emergency contacts
- employment records (including professional membership, references and proof of eligibility to work in the UK and security checks)
- bank details
- pension details
- medical information including physical health or mental condition (occupational health information)
- information relating to health and safety
- trade union membership
- offences (including alleged offences), criminal proceedings, outcomes and sentences
- employment tribunal applications, complaints, accidents, and incident details
How will your information be used?
- Staff administration and management (including payroll and performance)
- Pensions administration
- Business management and planning
- Accounting and Auditing
- Accounts and records
- Crime prevention and prosecution of offenders
- Education
- Health administration and services
- Information and databank administration
- Sharing and matching of personal information for national fraud initiative
- Statutory reporting - for example, sharing data about our schools workforce as part of the schools workforce census, sent to the Department for Education
- To support applications to the council's Refer a Friend scheme, where applicable.
- Provision of staff benefits
We aim to maintain high standards, adopt best practice for our record keeping and regularly check and report on how we are doing. Your information is never sold for direct marketing purposes.
Our staff are trained to handle your information correctly and protect your confidentiality and privacy.
Your information is processed in the UK or in a country with an adequacy agreement with the UK.
What is the legal basis for processing your information?
We have a legal basis to process your data as part of your contract of employment (either permanent or temporary) following data protection and employment legislation. Processing is also necessary for carrying out the employer’s obligations under employment law.
How long will your information be kept for?
Your information will be kept for 7 years after termination of employment unless special circumstances apply, for example, records for those working in residential care homes will be kept for longer. A full list of retention periods applicable to personnel files is available on request.
Sharing your information
There are a number of reasons why we share information. This can be due to:
- our obligations to comply with legislation - for example, sharing schools workforce census data as required by the Education Act 2005
- our duty to comply any court orders which may be imposed.
Any sharing of personal data is always done:
- on case-by-case basis
- using the minimum personal data necessary
- with the appropriate security controls in place
- in line with legislation.
Information is only shared with those agencies and bodies who have a "need to know" or where you have consented to the sharing of your personal data to such persons.
We may use the information we hold about you to assist in the detection and prevention of crime or fraud. We may also share this information with other bodies that inspect and manage public funds.
Use of third party organisations
East Sussex County Council may share your information with trusted external organisations to process your data on our behalf.
To enable effective staff administration, East Sussex County Council may share your information with external organisations to process your data on our behalf in order to comply with our obligations as an employer. The following processing may be undertaken by third party organisations:
- occupational health, including health assessments
- counselling and employee assistance
- sickness absence recording (including an optional nurse referral service)
- Line management by trained colleagues from Brighton & Hove City Council, and Surrey County Council
- ICT, payroll and finance processing by trained colleagues from Brighton & Hove City Council, and Surrey County Council
- training, including provision of an electronic learning management system
- If you take part in the Council’s Additional Voluntary Contribution pension scheme, with the scheme provider AVC Wise. You can find a copy of the AVC Wise privacy statement here.
- Personnel numbers are shared in an anonymised format in order to facilitate access to our externally managed staff benefits platform and electric vehicle salary sacrifice scheme.
In addition, in the event that your job role is transferred to a new employer under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) regulations, or if you are seconded to a new employer, your information will be shared with the new employer. You can always expect to be informed of this in advance.
Any organisation commissioned by the Council will be under contractual obligation to comply with data protection legislation.
Your rights
Under data protection legislation, you have the right:
- to be informed why, where and how we use your information
- to ask for access to your information
- to ask for your information to be corrected if it is inaccurate or incomplete
- to ask for your information to be deleted or removed where there is no need for us to continue processing it
- to ask us to restrict the use of your information
- to ask us to copy or transfer your information from one IT system to another in a safe and secure way, without impacting the quality of the information
- to object to how your information is used
- to challenge any decisions made without human intervention (automated decision making)
Please visit data subject rights for further details.
How to find out more or complain
Should you have any further queries on the uses of your information, please speak directly to our service:
To complain about the use of your information, please contact our Customer Services Team or our Data Protection Officer.
Further information on making a complaint.
You can also contact the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for further information or to make a complaint:
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire SK9 5AF
Phone: 0303 123 1113 (local rate)