Applicants & Employee Privacy Notice

Page contents

What is the purpose of this document?
Data protection principles
Data protection officer

What is the purpose of this document?

FARA Charity Shops is a “data controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. You are being sent a copy of this privacy notice because you are applying for work with FARA Charity Shops (whether as an employee, worker or contractor). It makes you aware of how and why your personal data will be used, namely for the purposes of the recruitment exercise, and how long it will usually be retained for. It provides you with certain information that must be provided under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Data protection principles

FARA Charity Shops will comply with data protection law and principles, which means that your data will 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 FARA Charity Shops hold about you

In connection with your application for work with FARA Charity Shops, we will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:

The information you have provided to FARA Charity Shops in your curriculum vitae and covering letter.
The information you have provided on our application form, including name, title, address, telephone number, personal email address, date of birth, gender, employment history, qualifications, and experience, availability for full time or part time work,
Any information you provide to FARA Charity Shops during an interview.
Any other information obtained during a volunteer day if appropriate.

FARA Charity Shops 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.
Information about your health, including any medical condition, health, and sickness records.

How is your personal information collected?

FARA Charity Shops collect personal information about candidates from the following sources:

You, the candidate.
Indeed, Reed, Hayes and other recruitment agencies, from which FARA Charity Shops collect the following categories of data: Contact details including Name, address, personal email address, telephone number, experience and qualifications, position for which you are applying, availability to work full time or part time,
Your named referees, from whom FARA Charity Shops collect the following categories of data: Capabilities, length of service, working relationships, suitability for the role, sickness record etc.

How FARA Charity Shops will use information about you

FARA Charity Shops will use the personal information we collect about you to:

Assess your skills, qualifications, and suitability for the role.
Carry out background and reference checks, where applicable.
Communicate with you about the recruitment process.
Keep records related to our hiring processes.
Comply with legal or regulatory requirements.

It is in our legitimate interests to decide whether to appoint you to the role for which you have applied since it would be beneficial to our business to appoint someone to that vacancy.

FARA Charity Shops also needs to process your personal information to decide whether to enter into a contract of employment with you.

Having received your CV and covering letter and/or your application form, FARA Charity Shops will then process that information to decide whether you meet the basic requirements to be shortlisted for the role. If you do, we will decide whether your application is strong enough to invite you for an interview. If we decide to call you for an interview, we will use the information you provide to us at the interview to decide whether to offer you the role. If FARA Charity Shops decide to offer you the role, we will then take up references and may carry out further checks if appropriate including eligibility to work in the UK before confirming your appointment.

If you fail to provide personal information

If you fail to provide information when requested, which is necessary for FARA Charity Shops to consider your application (such as evidence of qualifications or work history and eligibility to work in the UK), we will not be able to process your application successfully. For example, if we require references for this role and you fail to provide us with relevant details, FARA Charity Shops will not be able to take your application further.

How FARA Charity Shops use particularly sensitive personal information

FARA Charity Shops will use your particularly sensitive personal information in the following ways:

FARA Charity Shops will use information about your disability status to consider whether we need to provide appropriate adjustments during the recruitment process, for example whether adjustments need to be made to any interview.
FARA Charity Shops will use information about your race, national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, your sexual life or sexual orientation, to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting.

Information about criminal convictions

FARA Charity Shops does not envisage processing information about criminal convictions.

Automated decision-making

You will not be subject to decisions that will have a significant impact on you based solely on automated decision-making.

Why might FARA Charity Shops share my personal information with third parties?

FARA Charity Shops do not envisage sharing your personal information with any third parties for the purposes of processing your application. However, should we do so all our third-party service providers are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. FARA Charity Shops does 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.

Data Security

FARA Charity Shops has 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 and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

FARA Charity Shops has 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.

How long will you retain my information for?

FARA Charity Shops will retain your personal information for a period of six months after we have communicated to you our decision about whether to appoint you to the role. FARA Charity Shops retain your personal information for that period so that we can show, in the event of a legal claim, that we have not discriminated against candidates on prohibited grounds and that we have conducted the recruitment exercise in a fair and transparent way. After this period, FARA Charity Shops will securely destroy your personal information in accordance with our data retention policy.

If FARA Charity Shops wish to retain your personal information on file, on the basis that a further opportunity may arise in future and we may wish to consider you for that, we will write to you separately, seeking your explicit consent to retain your personal information for a fixed period on that basis.

Your rights in connection with personal information – access, correction, erasure, and restriction 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 FARA Charity Shops hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
Request correction of the personal information that FARA Charity Shops 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 FARA Charity Shops 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 FARA Charity Shops 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 FARA Charity Shops is 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 FARA Charity Shops is processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask FARA Charity Shops 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 the FARA Charity Shops HR Director in writing at

FARA Charity Shops Head Office

2^nd Floor, Suite 1,

8 Waldegrave Road,

Teddington, TW11 8GT

Data protection officer

We have appointed FARA Charity Shops HR Director to oversee compliance with this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how FARA Charity Shops handles your personal information, please contact the HR Director. 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.

If you have any questions about this privacy notice, please contact FARA Charity Shops HR Director Felicia Balasel, on 020 8973 0910 or by email to felicia@faracharity.org .