Privacy Statement - Working for Essex

Protecting the privacy of candidates and clients

We are committed to protecting your privacy when you use our service.  This privacy notice explains how we use information about you and how we protect your privacy.

Please visit the Essex County Council website to see the full privacy notice.

Who is collecting information about me?

Essex County Council.

Our Data Protection Officer makes sure we follow the law. If you have any concerns or questions about how we look after your personal information, please contact our Data Protection Officer.
Email: dpo@essex.gov.uk
Phone: 0345 743 0430 (ask to speak to the Information Governance Team)

What information are you collecting about me and why?

The information which we collect and store during normal use of the site is used to monitor and analyse how parts of the site are used. Such use does not result in any personally identifiable data being collected or stored.

You have the option on certain pages within this site to explicitly submit personal information to ECC in order that we might send you further information or alerts. Set out below are the types of information we will ask you to provide by the service you receive. 

Work seeking services

The information that ECC will collect will be personal information such as name, contact details, work history, education, skills, training, and other onboarding compliance requirements. We may use this information to provide work-seeking services, to assess your suitability to work as well as administrative and management purposes in connection with providing work seeking services. Some of our websites and applications enable you to directly submit CV’s and apply for specific roles and to join our candidate talent pool.

Client services

The information that ECC will collect will be personal information such as name, contact details and job title. We may use this information to provide services to you.

New Recruits

If you are a successful candidate your phone number and email address will be shared with Essex County Council’s Tech Services team.  They need to be able to verify who you are so that they can assist with managing password resets and technical support until your ECC account has been created.   Once your ECC account has been created Tech Services will then no longer use your personal information for this purpose.

If you are a successful candidate, you will need to use your personal email address to access learning materials on Cornerstone until your ECC account has been created.  

There will be some exceptions where some roles are not issued with an ECC account such as school crossing patrol officers and tutors.  If this applies to you, your personal email address will be needed to retain access to Cornerstone for learning material.  This forms part of the resources available to all employees.

Marketing and communications

If you choose to download our reports or white papers or to register to news, events and alerts, we will use the information you provide us to:

  • Send you the content requested;
  • Inform our marketing strategy;
  • Enhance our thought leadership content;
  • Send you related information that we believe will be of interest to you.

All data will be processed in accordance with the relevant data protection legislation including the General Data Protection Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of 27 April 2016.

What if I choose not to give you my personal information?

You are not obliged to give ECC your personal information, but this will mean that your application cannot be progressed.  If you wish to withdraw your application at any point contact resourcing.team@essex.gov.uk.

Who might you share my information with?

We may share information collected for work seeking services with our clients, but only as strictly required in the work seeking process, for example the review and shortlist of candidate profiles. As part of our work seeking services your personal data may be stored electronically; passed to our clients for processing or checked with third parties.

ECC may share your data with authorised third parties and associates as applicable to the service being provided. These third parties include our partners who we are recruiting on behalf of, employment background screening partners, associates, insurance partner and IT service providers.

Other than this, your information collected will not be shared outside ECC, unless required for legal or regulatory purposes. If we seek to change this, we will seek your consent at that stage. For the purposes of direct marketing you will always be asked to “opt in” and we will not share your personal information with third parties without your permission.

Where might you transfer my information outside the UK?

Most of our systems that would store your information are based in the UK or the European Economic Area. If we need to transfer your personal data to countries outside the European Economic Area, we will ensure that such transfers are compliant with the GDPR. Appropriate measures will be put in place to keep your personal data secure.

How long do you keep hold of my information?

ECC has a Data Retention Policy which applies to various functional activities, including HR. The policy mandates how long records containing personal data must be retained. Retention periods are determined by legislation and business requirements. When providing work seeking services or providing marketing and communications, we will hold your data for 2 years after last contact unless a legal or regulatory obligation requires that we hold this data for a superseding period.

For successful applicants we will hold this data for seven years after the employee leaves the organisation.

What you can do with your information

You can access your information

You can ask for access to the information we hold on you.  This is known as a Subject Access Request. Please contact us at transparencyteam@essex.gov.uk or telephone 0333 013 953 to make a request

You can ask to change information you think is inaccurate

If any information held is inaccurate or incomplete, you have the right to have that information corrected or completed.  If other parties have been passed the information (such as HMRC) we will, where possible, inform them of the rectification undertaken. Please contact your local ECC Resourcing contact to make this request.

You can ask to delete information (right to be forgotten)

In some circumstances you can ask for your personal information to be deleted.  Please note that we do not have to delete your information if we are required to have it by law.

Where your personal information has been shared with others, we will tell them about your request to us for it to be deleted.

 You can ask to limit what we use your personal data for

You have the right to ask us to restrict what we use your personal information for where:

  • You have identified inaccurate information and have told us of it
  • We have no legal reason to use that information but you want us to restrict what we use if for rather than erase the information altogether

You have the right to block or restrict processing, this won’t affect the processing done so far, but will stop further processing. For example, if you apply for a role, we will have to keep information on file for a certain period; we can however remove you from our active candidate talent pools if you wish not to be contacted about further opportunities.

The right to complain or contact us about a rights request

If you wish to discuss your personal data or lodge a concern about the way in which it is handled, please use any of the following details:
Email: dpo@essex.gov.uk
If you are unhappy with our response, you have the right to complain to the Supervisory Authority, the details of which are below:
Supervisory Authority: Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)
Website: https://ico.org.uk/concerns/
Email: casework@ico.org.uk  Telephone: 03031231113

Cookies

Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to your device when you visit a website. Cookies are then sent back to the originating website on each subsequent visit, or to another website that recognises that cookie.
Cookies do lots of different jobs, like letting you navigate between pages efficiently remembering your preferences, and generally improve your web site experience. They can also help to ensure that adverts you see online are more relevant to you and your interests.
We split cookies into 4 main categories:
Category 1: Strictly necessary cookies
Category 2: Performance cookies
Category 3: Functionality cookies
Category 4: Targeting cookies or advertising cookies


Category 1 – Strictly necessary cookies
These cookies are essential in order to enable you to move around the website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the website. Without these cookies services you have asked for, like register for whitepapers cannot be provided.
Please be aware our site uses this type of cookie.


Category 2 – Performance cookies
These cookies collect information about how visitors use a website, for instance which pages visitors go to most often, and if they get error messages from web pages. These cookies don’t collect information that identifies a visitor. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. It is only used to improve how a website works.
By using our website and online services, you agree that we can place these types of cookies on your device.


Category 3 – Functionality cookies
These cookies allow the website to remember choices you make (such as your user name and password) and provide enhanced, more personal features.
These cookies can also be used to remember changes you have made to text size, fonts and other parts of web pages that you can customise. They may also be used to provide services you have asked for such as watching a video or commenting on a blog. The information these cookies collect may be anonymous and they cannot track your browsing activity on other websites.
By using our website and online services, you agree that we can place these types of cookies on your device.


4 – Targeting cookies or advertising cookies
These cookies are used to deliver adverts more relevant to you and your interests. They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement as well as help measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaign. They remember that you have visited a website and this information is shared with other organisations such as advertisers. Quite often targeting or advertising cookies will be linked to site functionality provided by the other organisations.


Changes to our privacy policy
We regularly review our privacy policy and place any updates on this webpage. We may contact you by email or post to update you with any significant changes to the policy.