1. The information we ask for and why we ask for it

2. The legal basis for processing your information

3. The Application Stage

4. The Shortlisting Stage

5. Assessments and Interviews

6. Conditional Offer

7. After your start date

8. Secondments

9. How we make decisions about recruitment

10. How long we keep it

11. Your rights and

12. Whether we share it with a third party

1. The information we ask for and why we ask for it

We only collect the information we need to be able to assess your suitability for a role with us.  You don’t have to provide what we ask for, but it may affect your application if you don’t.

We will also use any feedback you provide about our recruitment process to help us to develop and improve it for others in the future.

The information we require at each stage of the recruitment process is explained below.

2. The legal basis for processing your information

We rely on different lawful bases through the recruitment process for processing your personal information:

• Contract – Processing your data is necessary to move your application forward before signing a contract of work. This concerns employment or preemployment checks [article 6(1)(b) of the GDPR].
• Legal obligations and statutory duties (public task) – The law requires us to check that you are entitled to work in the UK. We also have a legal obligation under equality legislation to make reasonable adjustments for disabled job applicants and to comply with other disability discrimination obligations [article 6(1)(c) of GDPR].
• Public task (or statutory duty) – We also need to comply with our statutory duties under employment legislation [article 6(1)(e) of GDPR and Schedule 1 part 2 paragraph 6(2)(a) of DPA2018].
• Employment obligations – it is necessary to collect some special category data, such as health, religious or ethnicity information to enable us to exercise our obligations or rights under employment law. For instance, assessing your fitness to work or for equalities monitoring of our recruitment process [article 9(2)(b) of the GDPR, and Schedule 1 part 1(1) of the DPA2018].

3. The Application Stage

We ask you for your personal details including name and contact details.  We’ll also ask you about previous experience, education, referees and for answers to questions relevant to the role.  Our recruitment team will have access to all this information.

You will also be asked to provide equal opportunities information.  This is not mandatory – if you don’t provide it, it won’t affect your application. We won’t make the information available to any staff outside our recruitment team, including hiring managers, in a way that can identify you.  Any information you provide will be used to produce and monitor equal opportunities statistics.

4. The Shortlisting Stage

The Recruitment Panel shortlist applications for interview.  They will not be provided with your name or contact details or with your equal opportunities information if you have provided it.

5. Assessments and Interviews

We may ask you to participate in an assessment; complete tests; attend an interview; or a combination of these.  Information will be generated by you and by us.  For example, you might complete a written test, or we might take interview notes.  This information is held by us.

If you are unsuccessful at this stage, we may still be interested in keeping your application for future reference.  We’ll ask you if you’d like us to do this.  If you say yes, we’ll let you know how long we’d like to keep your application for.

6. Conditional Offer

If we make a conditional offer of employment, we’ll ask you for information so that we can carry out pre-employment checks.  You must successfully complete pre-employment checks to progress to a final offer.  We must confirm the identity of our staff and their right to work in the United Kingdom, and seek assurance as to their trustworthiness, integrity, and reliability.

You must therefore provide:

• proof of your identity – you will be asked to attend our office with original documents; we’ll take copies
• proof of your qualifications – you will be asked to attend our office with original documents; we’ll take copies
• a criminal records declaration to declare any unspent convictions

We’ll contact your referees, using the details you provide in your application, directly to obtain references.

We’ll also ask you:

• to complete a questionnaire about your health to establish your fitness to work and
• about any reasonable adjustments you may require under the Equality Act 2010. This information will be shared with relevant PSOW staff to ensure these are in place for when you start your employment.

If we make a final offer, we’ll also ask you for the following:

• bank details – to process salary payments
• emergency contact details – so we know who to contact in case you have an emergency at work
• any membership of a Civil Service Pension scheme – so we can send you a questionnaire to see whether you are eligible to re-join your previous scheme. Or we’ll provide your information to our partnership pension provider if you don’t want to join the Civil Service Pension scheme.

7. After your start date

Further privacy information is provided to new employees when they start working with us.

8. Secondments

We also offer opportunities for people to come and work with us on a secondment basis.  We accept applications from individuals or organisations who think they could benefit from their staff working with us.

Applications are sent directly to us.  Once we have considered your application, if we are interested in speaking to you further, we’ll contact you using the details you give.

We may ask you to provide more information about your skills and experience or invite you to an interview.

If you are seconded to us, we’ll ask you to declare any potential declaration of interest with any of the bodies in our jurisdiction.  You’ll also be required to adhere to a confidentiality agreement, which will be agreed with your organisation.

We ask for this information so that we fulfil our obligations to avoid conflicts of interest and to protect the information we hold.

9. How we make decisions about recruitment

Final recruitment decisions are made by the Recruitment Panel and members of our recruitment team. We take account of all the information gathered during the application process.

You can ask about decisions on your application by speaking to your contact in our recruitment team or by emailing Recruitment@ombudsman.wales

10. How long we keep your information for

If you are successfully appointed to a role with us, we will retain your information for as long as you are working with us.  Information is securely destroyed 7 years following departure.

We keep the information of those who are unsuccessful for 12 months from the date we notify them.  All unsuccessful applications and associated information will be kept for 1 year following the closing date, after which point, they will be destroyed securely.

The Recruitment Panel’s decision, matrices and notes will also be destroyed after 1 year.

11. Your rights

You have the following rights over the information we hold about you:

• to request access to your information
• to ask that we update, complete or correct your information, if it is inaccurate or incomplete
• the right to object to our using your information in certain circumstances, and
• the right to limit our use of it in certain circumstances.

You can contact us to exercise your rights or to make a complaint about how your information is used by emailing Information.Request@ombudsman.wales

If you are unhappy with the way in which we have used your information you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

12. Whether we share it with a third party

We sometimes advertise recruitment opportunities through third party web sites such as Indeed or Total Jobs.  You should read their privacy notices if you apply via this route.

If we are undertaking psychometric testing, we will share your email address and name with a third party such as Pearson Education Ltd.  They will return the results of the test to us.  For more information read their privacy notice.