ONR 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 during and after your working relationship with us, in accordance with data protection law, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
It applies to all employees, workers and contractors.
ONR 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.
This notice applies to current and former employees, workers and contractors. This notice does not form part of any contract of employment or other contract to provide services. This notice can be updated at any time and we will inform you if this occurs.
It is important that you read this notice, together with any other privacy notice that is provided 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.
We will comply with data protection law. This says that the personal information we hold about you must be:
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 collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:
We will also collect, store and use the following "special categories" of more sensitive personal information:
We typically collect personal information about employees, workers and contactors through the application and recruitment process, either directly from candidates or sometimes from an employment agency or background check provider. We will sometimes collect additional information from third parties including former employers, credit reference agencies or other background check agencies, including:
We will collect additional personal information in the course of job-related activities throughout the period of you working for us.
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.
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:
There can be rare occasions where it becomes necessary to use your personal information to protect your interests (or someone else's interests).
We need all the categories of information in the list above (see: The kind of information we hold about you) to enable us to perform our contract with you; to enable us to comply with legal obligations, to carry out our functions as a government department/functions of the Crown; or where it is necessary to do so in the public interest.
The situations in which we will process your personal information are listed below.
Some of the purposes will overlap and there can be several grounds which justify our use of your personal information.
If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we will not be able to fully perform the contract we have entered into with you (such as paying you or providing a benefit), or we could be prevented from complying with our legal obligations (such as to ensure the health and safety of our workers).
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 or new purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
Please note that we will if necessary process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
"Special categories" of particularly sensitive personal information require higher levels of protection. Special categories of data is data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal information. We will, if necessary, process special categories of personal information in the following circumstances:
In some circumstances, we will 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 will use your particularly sensitive personal information in the following ways:
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 for one of the other reasons outlined in the box above: ‘How we use particularly sensitive personal information’. In limited circumstances, if the need arises, we will 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.
We will only use information relating to criminal convictions or alleged criminal behaviour where the law allows us to do so. This can arise when it is necessary for us to comply with the law or for another reason where there is a substantial public interest in us doing so.
Less commonly, we will, if necessary, use information relating to criminal convictions or alleged criminal behaviour where it is necessary in relation to legal claims.
We will only collect information about criminal convictions or allegations of criminal behaviour where 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/allegations as part of the recruitment process or if we are notified of such information directly by you in the course of you working for us. We will use information about criminal convictions/allegations and offences in the following ways:
We are allowed to use your personal information in this way where it is in line with our data protection policy and where one of the following reasons arises:
Automated decision-making takes place when an electronic system uses personal information to make a decision without human intervention. We are allowed to use automated decision-making in the following circumstances:
If we make an automated decision on the basis of any particularly sensitive personal information, we must have either your explicit written consent or it must be justified in the public interest, and we must also put in place appropriate measures to safeguard your rights.
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 will in some circumstances have to share your data with third parties, including third-party service providers and other Civil Service bodies.
We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law.
We will in some circumstances transfer your personal information outside the EU.
If we do, you can expect a similar degree of protection in respect of your personal information.
We will share your personal information with third parties where required by law, where it is necessary to administer the working relationship with you; where it is in the public interest to do so or where it is necessary for the performance of our functions as a Government Department or a function of the Crown. This will, in some circumstances, involve sharing special categories of personal data and, where relevant, data about criminal convictions/allegations.
"Third parties" includes third-party service providers (including contractors and designated agents) and other entities within the Civil Service. The following activities are carried out by third-party service providers: payroll, pension administration, benefits provision and administration, IT services, security vetting. The following third-party service providers process personal information about you for the following purposes:
All our third-party service providers 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.
We will share your personal information with other Civil Service organisations as part of our regular reporting activities on departmental performance, in the context of a business reorganisation or restructuring exercise, for system maintenance support and hosting of data; business planning/talent management initiatives, succession planning, statistical analysis; and general management and functioning of the Civil Service. Personal data is also shared with the Office for National Statistics, mainly for statistical purposes.
If required, we will need to share your personal information with a regulator or to otherwise comply with the law.
We have put in place measures to protect the security of your information. Details of these measures are available upon request.
Third parties will only process your personal information on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to keep it secure.
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 will only process your personal information on our instructions. Details of these measures can be obtained from the ONR Information Technology Security Officer
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.
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. Details of retention periods for different aspects of your personal information are available in our retention policy which is available upon request. 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.
In some circumstances we will anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we will use such information without further notice to you. Once you are no longer an employee, worker or contractor of the company we will retain and securely destroy your personal information in accordance with our data retention policy or applicable laws and regulations.
Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:
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).
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 contact@onr.gov.uk in writing.
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we are allowed under the law to charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we can refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.
We sometimes need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.
In the limited circumstances where you 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 contact@onr.gov.uk 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.
We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) to oversee compliance with this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the DPO. You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues.
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 will 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: