As part of any recruitment process, Lovat Parks Limited collects and processes personal data relating to job applicants. Lovat Parks Limited is committed to being transparent about how it collects and uses that data and to meeting its data protection obligations.

What information do we collect?

During recruitment, Lovat Parks Limited collects a range of information about you. This includes:

• your name, address and contact details, including email address and telephone number
• details of your qualifications, skills, experience and employment history
• information about your current level of remuneration, including benefit entitlements
• whether or not you have a disability for which Lovat Parks Limited needs to make reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process
• information about your entitlement to work in the UK

Lovat Parks Limited may collect this information in a variety of ways. For example, data might be contained in online application forms, CVs, letters, emails, online messaging, or obtained from your passport or other identity documents, or collected through interviews or other forms of assessment or testing.

We may partner with recruitment or other consultants and collect data from and share data with them.

We may also collect personal data about you from other third parties, such as references supplied by former employers or information from employment background check providers. We will seek information from third parties only once a job offer to you has been made and will inform you that we are doing so.

Data will be stored in a range of different places, including on your application record, in HR/payroll management systems and on other IT systems (including email). Lovat Parks Limited uses People First (provided by MHR) as its HR Management System, which includes a full applicant tracking module. We request certain details from you to be able to make an offer of employment, in addition to the above; namely National Insurance Number and date of birth.

Why do we process personal data?

Lovat Parks Limited needs to process data to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract with you. We may also need to process your data to enter into a contract with you should we reach that stage of the process.

In some cases, we need to process data to ensure that we are complying with our legal obligations. For example, we are required to check a successful applicant's eligibility to work in the UK before employment starts.

Lovat Parks Limited has a legitimate interest in processing personal data during the recruitment process and for keeping records of the process. Processing data from job applicants allows us to manage the recruitment process, assess and confirm a candidate's suitability for employment and decide to whom to offer a job. We may also need to process data from job applicants to respond to and defend against legal claims.

We may process special categories of data, such as information about ethnic origin, sexual orientation or religion or belief, to monitor recruitment statistics. We may also collect information about whether or not applicants have a disability to make reasonable adjustments for candidates where needed. Lovat Parks Limited processes such information to carry out its obligations and exercise specific rights in relation to employment.

Lovat Parks Limited seeks information about criminal convictions and offences for all team members via the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS). We request a DBS check to enable us to protect our team and our guests and our approach to conducting checks is set out in our Policy, which is available on request. This will not be not be done until an offer of employment has been made and we seek your consent to do so.

If your application is unsuccessful, we may keep your personal data on file in case there are future employment opportunities for which you may be suited. Lovat Parks Limited will ask for your consent before we keep your data for this purpose and you are free to withdraw your consent at any time.

Who has access to data?

Your information may be shared internally or with our appointed consultants working on behalf of Lovat Parks Limited for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. This includes interviewers involved in the recruitment process.

Access to DBS data is strictly controlled by the Human Resources Department.

Other than as specified above, we will not share your data with third parties, unless your application for employment is successful and we make you an offer of employment. We will then share your data with former employers to obtain references for you and employment background check providers to obtain necessary background checks, where relevant for the role.

How do we protect data?

We take the security of your data seriously. Lovat Parks Limited has internal policies and controls in place to try to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by its employees in the performance of their duties, by applying a defence-in-depth strategy to cyber security that encompasses, in line with best practices, the secure configuration of identities, devices, data and apps, email filtering, web filtering, endpoint threat detection, monitoring, backup, as well as mandatory regular cyber security awareness training for all users that access our systems.

Access to data in People First is restricted to only authorised individuals. Those who do have access have single user access with full password protection and specific user levels are assigned. Control of this system is the responsibility of the Human Resources Department.

Electronic personal files in which information is stored for the purpose of processing successful applicants are only accessible to the Human Resources Department using Microsoft SharePoint with full password protection.

For how long does Lovat Parks Limited keep data?

If your application for employment is unsuccessful, we will hold your data on file for 12 months after the end of the relevant recruitment process. If you agree to allow us contacting you about future employment opportunities, we will do so. You have the right to request that we don’t contact you, which should be made to Jane Aspinall careers@lovatparks.com.

If your application for employment is successful, personal data gathered during the recruitment process will be transferred to your electronic personal file and retained during your employment. The periods for which your data will be held will be provided to you in a new privacy notice.

Your rights

As a data subject, you have a number of rights. You can:

• access and obtain a copy of your data on request
• require us to change incorrect or incomplete data
• require us to delete or stop processing your data, for example where the data is no longer necessary for the purposes of processing
• object to the processing of your data where we are relying on its legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact careers@lovatparks.com. Please put privacy and GDPR, which stands for General Data Protection Regulations, as the subject heading.

If you believe that we have not complied with your data protection rights, you can complain to the Information Commissioner.

What if you do not provide personal data?

You are under no statutory or contractual obligation to provide data to Lovat Parks Limited during the recruitment process, however, if you do not provide the information, we may not be able to process your application for employment properly or at all.