Privacy Notice for candidates, employees, workers and contractors

What is the purpose of this document?

Samuel Knight International Limited is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information. This privacy notice describes how we collect and use personal information about you in accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UKGDPR) and Data Protection Act 2018. This Privacy Notice applies to data held by Samuel Knight International and it’s parent company Knight Recruitment Group Limited, together with any subsidiaries of or affiliated companies of the parent company.

It applies to all candidates who have data stored on our databases and within our business systems. Samuel Knight International Limited is a "data controller". This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We are required under data protection legislation to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice. We may update this notice at any time.

It is important that you read this notice, together with any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information.

Data protection principles

We will comply with data protection law. This says that the personal information we hold about you must be:

Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way
Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes
Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes
Accurate and kept up to date
Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about
Kept securely

The kind of information we hold about you

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data). There are "special categories" of more sensitive personal data which require a higher level of protection.

We may collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:

Personal contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, and personal email addresses.
Date of birth
Gender
Marital status and dependants
Next of kin and emergency contact information
National Insurance number
Bank account details, payroll records and tax status information
Salary, annual leave, pension and benefits information
Start date
Location of employment or workplace
Copy of driving licence and passport
Recruitment information (including copies of right to work documentation, references and other information included in a CV or cover letter or as part of the application process)
Employment records (including job titles, work history, working hours, training records and professional memberships)

We may also collect, store and use the following "special categories" of more sensitive personal information:

Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and political opinions
Trade union membership
Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records
Genetic information and biometric data
Information about criminal convictions and offences

How is your personal information collected?

We collect personal information through the application and recruitment process, either indirectly from candidates via job boards, LinkedIn and other social media and online job searching platforms or directly from candidates. We may collect additional information from third parties including former employers.

How we will use information about you

We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances:

Where we want to inform you of a role or update the information we hold on you
Where we need to perform the contract we have entered with you
Where we need to comply with a legal obligation
Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests

We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:

Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else's interests).
Where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes.

Situations in which we will use your personal information

We need all the categories of information in the list above (see the kind of information we hold about you) primarily to allow us to perform our contract with you and to enable us to comply with legal obligations. In some cases, we may use your personal information to pursue legitimate interests of our own or those of third parties, provided your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. The situations in which we will process your personal information are listed below.

Informing you of roles suitable for your skill set and liaising with you regarding applying for said roles
Paying you and, if you are an employee, deducting tax and National Insurance contributions
Deciding about your recruitment or appointment
Determining the terms on which you work for us
Checking you are legally entitled to work in the UK
Providing benefits as detailed in your contract
Administering the contract we have entered into with you
Business management and planning, including accounting and auditing
Making arrangements for the termination of our working relationship
Dealing with legal disputes involving you, or other employees, workers and contractors, including accidents at work
Ascertaining your fitness to work
Complying with health and safety obligations
To prevent fraud
Providing details about you (including photographs or video of you) and your skills and experience to clients and customers and potential clients and customers
To monitor your use of our information and communication systems to ensure compliance with our IT policies.
To ensure network and information security, including preventing unauthorised access to our computer and electronic communications systems and preventing malicious software distribution
To conduct data analytics studies to review and better understand employee retention and attrition rates.
Equal opportunities monitoring.
Some of the above grounds for processing will overlap and there may be several grounds which justify our use of your personal information.

If you fail to provide personal information

If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have entered with you (such as paying you or providing a benefit), or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations (such as to ensure the health and safety of our workers).

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

How we use particularly sensitive personal information

"Special categories" of particularly sensitive personal information require higher levels of protection. We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal information. We may process special categories of personal information in the following circumstances:

In limited circumstances, with your explicit written consent.
Where we need to carry out our legal obligations and in line with our data protection policies.
Where it is needed in the public interest, such as for equal opportunities monitoring, and in line with our data protection policy.
Where it is needed to assess your working capacity on health grounds, subject to appropriate confidentiality safeguards.

Less commonly, we may process this type of information where it is needed in relation to legal claims or where it is needed to protect your interests (or someone else's interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent, or where you have already made the information public. We may also process such information about members or former members during legitimate business activities with the appropriate safeguards.

Do we need your consent?

We do not need your consent if we use special categories of your personal information in accordance with our written policy to carry out our legal obligations or exercise specific rights in the field of employment law. In limited circumstances, we may approach you for your written consent to allow us to process certain particularly sensitive data. If we do so, we will provide you with full details of the information that we would like and the reason we need it, so that you can carefully consider whether you wish to consent. You should be aware that it is not a condition of your contract with us that you agree to any request for consent from us.

Information about criminal convictions

We may only use information relating to criminal convictions where the law allows us to do so. This will usually be where such processing is necessary to carry out our obligations and provided we do so in line with our data protection policy.

Less commonly, we may use information relating to criminal convictions where it is necessary in relation to legal claims, where it is necessary to protect your interests (or someone else's interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent, or where you have already made the information public.

We may also process such information about members or former members during legitimate business activities with the appropriate safeguards. We envisage that we will hold information about criminal convictions. We will only collect information about criminal convictions if it is appropriate given the nature of the role and where we are legally able to do so. Where appropriate, we will collect information about criminal convictions as part of the recruitment process or we may be notified of such information directly by you during you working for us. We will use information about criminal convictions and offences in the following ways:

To determine your suitability for employment in roles which require a satisfactory DBS certificate or a criminal record check.

We are allowed to use your personal information in this way to carry out our legal obligations and because it is in our legitimate business interests.

Automated decision-making
You will not be subject to decisions that will have a significant impact on you based solely on automated decision-making, unless we have a lawful basis for doing so and we have notified you. We do not envisage that any decisions will be taken about you using automated means, however we will notify you in writing if this position changes.

Data sharing
We may have to share your data with third parties, including third-party service providers and other subsidiaries or affiliated companies of Samuel Knight International Limited’s parent company, Knight Recruitment Group Limited. This may include the transfer of data with Swipar Limited, an affiliated company of Knight Recruitment Group Limited. When transferring data between subsidiaries or affiliated companies, including Swipar Limited your data will be protected by this Privacy Notice. We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We may transfer your personal information outside the UK. If we do, you can expect a similar degree of protection in respect of your personal information.

Samuel Knight International Limited will use the services of Swipar Limited, an affiliated company of Knight Recruitment Group Limited, which uses a digital platform to match candidates to job roles. In the event that the Swipar app is used by you, then you will be subject to a separate privacy notice and should read it before use of the app.

Why might you share my personal information with third parties?

We will share your personal information with third parties where required by law, where it is necessary to administer the working relationship with you or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so. We will also share your personal information with third parties with whom you are seeking employment or engagement by engaging our services as recruitment consultants. We may also share your personal information with third parties to whom you are assigned to work while employed by us. This may include providing your prospective employer or the company to which you are assigned with sensitive personal data such as copies of your passport or other identity documents.

Which third-party service providers process my personal information?

"Third parties" includes third-party service providers (including contractors and designated agents) and other entities within our group. The following activities are carried out by third-party service providers: payroll, visa, pension administration, benefits provision and administration, psychometric testing, IT services, job aggregators, and job boards.

How secure is my information with third-party service providers and other entities in our group?

All our third-party service providers and other entities in the group are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

What about other third parties?

We may share your personal information with other third parties, for example in the context of the possible sale or restructuring of the business or in providing an employment reference for you. We may also need to share your personal information with a regulator or to otherwise comply with the law.

Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They, and any third parties, will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

Data retention

How long will you use my information for?
We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

Rights of access, correction, erasure, and restriction
Your duty to inform us of changes
It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your working relationship with us.

Your rights in connection with personal information
Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a "data subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.
If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please contact us in writing for a Subject Access Request form.

Right to withdraw consent

In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact us. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.

Accessing your Data

If you wish to make a data subject request or submit a complaint regarding the way we have handled your data please contact our Data Protection Lead. You are able to contact by email compliance@samuel-knight.com or mail:

FAO Data Protection Lead
Samuel Knight International Ltd
Ground Floor Unit B, City Quadrant
11 Waterloo Square
Newcastle Upon Tyne
NE1 4DP
UK

Samuel Knight are registered with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) under registration number ZA118015. The ICO is an independent regulatory body and complaints and concerns can be registered directly with the ICO. Further information can be obtained from there website https://ico.org.uk/

Changes to this privacy notice
We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.

If you have any questions about this privacy notice, please contact us.

Signed Date March 2022
Steven Rawlingson
CEO