External job applicants privacy notice

This privacy notice provides details of how and why Leeds City Council collects and uses personal information about its external job applicants.

The data controller for the information we collect

This Privacy Notice is provided to meet the requirements of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) to explain how we process your personal data in delivering the External Recruitment Service.

Leeds City Council is the data controller for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 2018 and other regulations, including the UK General Data Protection Regulation, which means it determines what your data is used for and why it is collected. The purpose of this privacy notice is to tell you about what information we collect about you when you use our service, how we use that information, and who we may share it with. The contact details of the data controller are Leeds City Council, Merrion House, 110 Merrion Way, Leeds, LS2 8BB.

The data we will collect

We will process the information provided in your application form and CV in addition to any supporting evidence we request from you for the purposes of deciding your suitability for a post.

Personal Data:

  • name
  • address
  • contact details
  • qualifications and skills (such as qualification date)
  • previous employment records (such as date of employment and reason for leaving)
  • name and contact details of referees
  • performance and appraisal information

Special category data:

  • ethnicity
  • sexual orientation
  • religion/ beliefs
  • disabilities
  • health-related information (including sickness and medication information such as periods of and reasons for absence and occupational health referrals and reports)

Criminal data:

  • declaration of unspent convictions
  • details of unspent conviction (at interview stage)

How we collect information about you

We collect information about you from you directly (for example, by asking you to complete one of our application forms, submitting your CV, or attending an assessment or interview). We may also obtain your information from other sources, such as:

  • your family members, carers or other persons acting on your behalf
  • referees (previous employers who you give us consent to contact)
  • DBS service for information relating to your criminal records
  • Home Office (if this is relevant to your visa status)
  • the NHS and other public bodies
  • other council departments

Why we process your data

We use your information for:

  • recruitment purposes (making decisions about applicants suitability to undertake a specific role, including shortlisting)
  • produce anonymous statistical information (such as for equality monitoring purposes)
  • undertake safeguarding and pre-employment checks (such as Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS))
  • ensuring right to work in the UK
  • research purposes (including undertaking surveys)
  • promoting Access to Work and reasonable adjustments
  • supporting pre-employment health checks

All the data collected will be treated in strict confidence and in accordance with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). The data provided by you will only be used for the purposes specified.

Lawful basis for processing

We will process your data in accordance with UK GDPR. The processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that the following applies:

Article 6(1)(a): the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes

Article 6(1)(c): processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject

The lawful basis for processing your special category data is in accordance with the following:

Article 9(2)(b): processing is necessary for the purposes of carrying out the obligations and exercising specific rights of the controller or of the data subject in the field of employment and social security

The processing of Special Category Data under Article 9 is further supported by the following condition in Schedule 1, Part 1: Statutory and government. purposes

This condition requires an Appropriate Policy Document to be in place, which sets out and explains the procedures for securing compliance with the principles in Article 5 and policies regarding the retention and erasure of such personal data. Our Appropriate Policy Document provides further information about this processing and supplements this privacy notice.

Whilst the majority of employee or applicant information you provide to us is mandatory or because we are under a legal obligation to process this, some of it is provided to us on a voluntary basis. In order to comply with data protection legislation, we will inform you whether you are required to provide certain information to us or if you have a choice in this.

Data retention, storage and destruction

Our data retention policies and procedures are designed to help ensure that we comply with our legal obligations in relation to the retention. This means that if you are unsuccessful, your application form and any interview notes will be kept for 6 months unless the law says that we need to hold it for longer or if there is a business requirement to do so. After this, your information will be deleted or archived.

If you are successful, your application form and interview notes will be added to your personnel file.

Who we share your data with

we share your data with agencies shown below as follows:

  • recruiting managers and other panel members of shortlisting and interview panels (will not receive equality information)
  • Business Support Centre, who process the onboarding and creation of the employment contract for successful applicants
  • human resources if any concerns are raised
  • the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS), where we need to make a pre-employment check for certain roles
  • with healthcare providers for pre-employment health checks
  • government departments and agencies where we have a statutory obligation to provide information (e.g. Dept. of Work and Pensions (DWP), Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), the Home Office (in connection with UK visas and immigration), and Office for National Statistics)
  • MyRecruitment (Itrent)
  • recruitment agencies
  • references

In circumstances where external stakeholder panels are required, the members of the panel received candidates’ names and a summary of their employment history, which is taken from the information provided in the application. These are destroyed after the interviews.

In addition, we will share your personal data:

  • where such disclosure is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject
  • in order to protect your vital interests or the vital interests of another natural person
  • for the purposes of security and prevention of fraud and other criminal activity
  • where such disclosure is necessary for the establishment, exercise, or defence of legal claims, whether in court proceedings or in an administrative or out-of-court procedure

Automated decision making

Your data will not be used for any automated decision-making, including profiling.

Your rights

The following rights under data protection law are available under the UK GDPR:

  • the right to access (where you can ask for copies of your personal data)
  • the right to rectification (where you can ask us to rectify inaccurate personal data and to complete incomplete personal data)
  • the right to erasure (where you can ask us to erase your personal data)
  • the right to restrict processing (where you can ask us to restrict the processing of your personal data)
  • the right to data portability (where you can ask that we transfer your personal data to another organisation or to you)
  • the right to object to processing (where you can object to the processing of your personal data)
  • the right to complain to a supervisory authority (where you can complain about our processing of your personal data)
  • withdraw consent (to the extent that the legal basis of our processing of your personal data is consent, you can withdraw that consent)

Where we process your information under legal obligation, certain rights do not apply, such as: 

  • erasure
  • data portability
  • objection to processing
  • the right to withdraw consent

These rights are subject to certain limitations and exceptions. You can learn more about your rights and how to exercise them, with further details on the Information Commissioner’s Office website. You may exercise any of the above rights in relation to your personal data by writing to us using the contact details provided below.

When your data gets sent to other countries

The information you provide will not be transferred to another country outside of the UK, unless we need to undertake police checks from your country of origin. 

Contact us

Any queries in relation to this privacy notice should be forwarded to:
Email:  recruitment@leeds.gov.uk 

Data Protection Officer

Aaron Linden
Head of Information Management and Governance - Data Protection Officer
Leeds City Council
Merrion House
110 Merrion Way
Leeds
LS2 8BB

DPO@leeds.gov.uk

The Council privacy notice is available online. 

Complaints

If you are unhappy with the way in which your information has been handled, you should speak with the specific service in the first instance.

Any data protection complaints about how the council has processed your personal data will be handled in accordance with the council’s complaints policy. You can find out how to submit a complaint.

If we cannot resolve your complaint, you can refer to the Information Commissioner if you consider that there has been an infringement of data protection legislation. Further details can be found on the Information Commissioner’s website.

Changes to this notice

We keep our privacy notice under regular review. We will notify you of significant changes to this notice by email or other means as appropriate. This privacy notice was last updated 24 January 2025.