Privacy Policy

Introduction

We at Ashgrove Services Limited are committed to protecting the privacy of our candidates, clients and users of our website. When you use Ashgrove Services, you trust us with your information, and we are committed to preserving that trust and providing a safe and secure user experience. We will ensure that the information you submit to us via our website or through any of our offices is only used for the purposes set out in this Data Privacy Notice.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) replaced the Data Protection Regulation (Directive 95/46/EC) from 25 May 2018. The Regulation aims to harmonise data protection legislation across EU member states, enhancing privacy rights for individuals and providing a strict framework within which commercial organisations can legally operate. Even though the UK left the EU on 31st December 2021, GDPR is still applicable in the UK. Your rights under the GDPR are set out in this notice, please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

Who controls your personal data?

The Data Controller Ashgrove Services Limited, a company registered in the UK.
The Data Controller’s data protection representative is the Head of Support Services.
You can contact them at office@ashgroveservices.co.uk

What is personal data?

Personal data is data that can identify you as a living individual. There is general personal data such as name, address, National Insurance number and online identifiers/location data. There is also sensitive personal data which includes information on physical and mental health, sexual orientation, race or ethnic origin, religious beliefs, trade union membership and criminal records. Sensitive personal data must be protected to a higher level.

Who we are, how do we get your data?

Ashgrove Services Limited is a recruitment agency and recruitment business as defined in the Employment Agencies Act 1973 (our business). We also provide training, event organisation and consultancy services from time to time. We collect the personal data from the following types of people to allow us to undertake our business;

Prospective and placed candidates for permanent or temporary roles;
Prospective and live client contacts (including referee contacts provided by candidates);
Supplier contacts to support our services;
Employees, consultants, temporary workers and contractors;

You may have applied directly to us, or we may have found your details from a jobs board or social networking site. We are able to process your data if we have a legal basis for doing so. There are six legal bases for processing data, but we will rely on (1) your consent to send direct marketing messages about services other than our recruitment services, (2) that the processing is necessary for the performance of a contract with you, or (3) that we have a legitimate interest in processing your personal data.

We collect information about you to carry out our core business and ancillary activities.

What data do we collect, and where from?

The personal data we collect or receive includes the following as applicable:

Name
Address
Email and other contact details
Date of birth
Job history (including information relating to placements through us)
Educational history, qualifications & skills
Visa and other right to work or identity information
Passport
Bank details
National insurance and tax (payroll) information
Next of kin and family details
Contact details of referees
Personal information relating to hobbies, interests and pastimes
Information contained in references and pre-employment checks from third parties
Other sensitive personal information such as health records (see ‘Sensitive Personal Data’ section below)
Your marketing preferences

We may obtain your personal data from the following sources (please note that this list is not exhaustive):

You (e.g. a Curriculum Vitae, application or registration form)
A client
Other candidates
Online job websites
Marketing databases
The public domain
Social Media such as LinkedIn
At interview
Conversations on the telephone or video conferencing (which may be recorded)
Notes following a conversation or meeting
Our websites and software applications

Where you are a Candidate, and we have obtained your personal data from a third party such as an online job board, it is our policy to advise you of the source when we first communicate with you.

How do we use your data?

The processing of your personal information may include:

Collecting and storing your personal data, whether in manual or electronic files
Notifying you of potential roles or opportunities
Assessing and reviewing your suitability for job roles
Introducing and/or supplying you to actual or potential Clients
Engaging you for a role with us or with our Clients, including any related administration e.g. timesheets and payroll
Collating market or sector specific information and providing the same to our Clients
Sending information to third parties with whom we have or intend to enter into arrangements which are related to our Recruitment Services
Providing information to regulatory authorities or statutory bodies, and our legal or other professional advisers including insurers
To market our Recruitment Services
Retaining a record of our dealings
Establishing quality, training and compliance with our obligations and best practice for the purposes of backing up information on our computer systems

Why we process your personal data.

Our legal basis for the processing of personal data is our legitimate business interests, described in more detail below, although we will also rely on contract, legal obligation and consent for specific uses of data.

We will rely on contract if we are negotiating or have entered into a placement agreement with you or your organisation or any other contract to provide services to you or receive services from you or your organisation.

We will rely on legal obligation if we are legally required to hold information on to you to fulfil our legal obligations.

We will in some circumstances rely on consent for particular uses of your data, and you will be asked for your express consent, if legally required. Examples of when consent may be the lawful basis for processing include permission to introduce you to a client (if you are a candidate).

We may use software to review the personal data of individuals recorded on our database, or who have applied for specific roles. The software may determine suitability for a specific role via targeted questions relating to the role, and/or may identify and select individual personal information according to the stored characteristics. For example, the software may enable us to quickly identify individuals from our database who have specific skills, e.g. an engineer and exclude individuals whose characteristics do not match particular requirements of a job role.

Where we use software to assist us with our assessment of your suitability for a particular job role and you consider that any such assessment has been made wrongly or incorrectly, you may ask for an explanation.

Entering into and performing a contract with you:
In order to provide our Recruitment Services, we may enter into a contract with you and/or a third party. In order to enter into a contract, we will need certain information, for example your name and address. A contract will also contain obligations on both your part and our part, and we shall process your data as is necessary for the purpose of those in order to process payroll on your behalf.
Compliance with legal obligations (regulatory and statutory obligations): We must comply with a number of statutory provisions when providing our Recruitment Services, which necessitate the processing of personal data. These include the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003, which amongst other things requires us to:
- Verify your identity
- Assess your suitability for an external job role
- Maintain records for specific periods
Where we engage a person to work for us (whether directly or as supplied to a Client), there are other statutory obligations that must be complied with including payroll, tax, social security, HMRC reporting requirements, and any other law or regulation.
Our legitimate interests (carrying on the commercial activity of the provision of Recruitment Services):

In providing our Recruitment Services, we will carry out some processing of personal data which is necessary for the purpose of our legitimate interests, which include:
- Retaining records of our dealings and transactions and where applicable, use such records for the purposes of;
  - establishing compliance with contractual obligations with Clients or suppliers
  - addressing any query or dispute that may arise including establishing, exercising or defending any legal claims
  - protecting our reputation
  - maintaining a backup of our system, solely for the purpose of being able to restore the system to a particular point in the event of a system failure or security breach
  - evaluating quality and compliance including compliance with this Privacy Notice
  - determining staff training and system requirements
- Using your personal data to:
  - assess suitability and contact you regarding potential opportunities and/or our services
  - collate market information or trends including providing analysis to potential or actual Clients
  - source potential opportunities or roles as part of our Recruitment Services
  - personalise your experience and our offering, whether via our website or otherwise
This means that for our commercial viability and to pursue these legitimate interests, we may continue to process your personal data for as long as we consider necessary for these purposes.
Consent to our processing of your data:
We may process your personal data on the basis that you have consented to us doing so for a specific purpose, for example, if you apply for a specific role you may have consented to our processing of the data that has been provided for the purpose of progressing your application and considering your suitability for that role. In other cases, you may have provided your written or verbal consent to the use of your data for a specific reason such as receiving marketing updates on some of our additional services.

You may withdraw your consent to our processing of your personal information for a particular purpose at any stage. However, please note that we may continue to retain, or otherwise use your personal information thereafter where we have a legitimate interest or a legal or contractual obligation to do so. Our processing in that respect will be limited to what is necessary in furtherance of those interests or obligations. Withdrawal of consent will not have any effect on the lawfulness of any processing based on consent before its withdrawal.

Part of our business activity involves researching information relating to individuals for the purposes of filling job roles. This may include obtaining personal data from online sources, for example we may obtain information from social media sites such as LinkedIn and job boards, some information being publicly available but others being from sites or providers to which we subscribe. From time to time we may also receive personal information about you from hiring organisations, colleagues and former employers, or from persons for whom you have provided services or been otherwise engaged.

Where information from third party sources is of no use to us, we shall discard it, however we may maintain a limited record in order to avoid the duplication of process. Where we consider that information may be of use to us for the provision of our Recruitment Services, any processing will be in accordance with this Privacy Notice. You do have the right to object to processing, please see the section on "Your Rights".

Your Rights.

Sensitive personal data is information which is intensely personal to you and is usually irrelevant to our dealings with you in respect of our Recruitment Services. Examples of SPD include information which reveals your political, religious or philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation, race or ethnic origin, or information relating to your health.

Regardless of the basis for your dealings with us, we request that you do not provide us with any sensitive personal data unless absolutely necessary. However, to the extent that you do provide us with any sensitive personal data, such as data which you choose to share with us in conversation, we shall only use that personal data for the purposes of our relationship with you or for the provision of our Recruitment Services. This will be for one or more of the following reasons:

Who we share personal data with:
We shall not share your personal data unless we are entitled to do so. The categories of persons with whom we may share your personal information include:

You have explicitly consented to the processing
Where processing is necessary for the purpose of obligations or rights under employment, social security or social protection law
To maintain records of our dealings to address any later dispute, including but not limited to the establishment, exercise or defence of any legal claims
Candidates and other third parties, necessary for the provision of our Recruitment Services
Any regulatory authority or statutory body pursuant to a request for information or any legal obligation which applies to us
Parties who process data on our behalf may include
- outsourced payroll providers
- IT Support
- storage service providers including cloud providers
- background screening providers
Legal and professional advisers
Insurers

Complaints

If you are dissatisfied about any aspect of the way in which your data is processed you may, in the first instance refer the matter to: office@ashgroveservices.co.uk. This does not affect your right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Contact Us
If you have any queries, you can contact us at: office@ashgroveservices.co.uk