Sinclair Gibson LLP 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 the General Data Protection Regulation Act 2018.
It applies to all employees, workers and contractors.
Sinclair Gibson LLP 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. 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 compliance officer
We have appointed a data compliance officer (DCO) to oversee compliance with this privacy notice. The firm’s DCO is Lucy Gibson. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the DCO. 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.
Data protection principles
We will comply with data protection law. This says that the personal information we hold about you must be:
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:
We may also collect, store and use the following “special categories” of more sensitive personal information:
How is your personal information collected?
We 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 may sometimes collect additional information from third parties including former employers or credit reference agencies. We will collect additional personal information in the course of job-related activities throughout the period of you working for us.
How we will use information about you
We need all the categories of information in the list above 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.
Some examples of reasonably foreseeable situations in which we will need to process your personal information are listed below.
Checking you are legally entitled to work in the UK.
Providing the following employee benefits to you:
Ascertaining your fitness to work and managing sickness absence.
Equal opportunities monitoring.
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 into 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 employees).
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 have in place an appropriate policy document (our Data Protection Policy) and safeguards which we are required by law to maintain when processing such data. 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 or exercise rights in connection with employment.
Where it is needed in the public interest, such as for equal opportunities monitoring or in relation to our occupational pension scheme.
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 in the course of legitimate business activities with the appropriate safeguards.
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 in the course of legitimate business activities with the appropriate safeguards.
Data sharing
We may have to share your data with third parties, including third-party service providers where it is necessary to administer the working relationship with you or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so. We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law, where it is necessary to administer the working relationship with you or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so.
“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; pension administration; benefits provision and administration; auditing, accounting and IT services.
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.
Transferring personal information outside the European Economic Area
We may need to transfer your personal information to countries outside the European Economic Area (EEA). We will only do so if the transfer is necessary for the performance of our contract with you, where the reason for the transfer serves our legitimate interests, or there is another lawful condition for the transfer.
To the extent that we transfer your personal information outside of the EEA, we will use all reasonable endeavours to ensure that a similar degree of protection is afforded to such information as is offered within the EU. We will do so by ensuring one or more of the following safeguards is in place:
The country to which the information is being transferred has been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal information by the European Commission;
We use a specific form of contract approved by the European Commission that gives personal information the same protection it has within Europe; and/or
If the personal information is being transferred to the United States of America, ensuring that the provider is affiliated with the Privacy Shield, which requires it to provide a similar level of protection to personal information to that which the information benefits from within Europe.
You can obtain further information about these measures from our Data Compliance Officer.
Data security
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 and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. Details of these measures may be obtained from the Director of Finance and Management (in relation to IT and accounting) or the Operations Manager (in relation to HR functions, marketing and facilities management).
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 generally retain your personal information for a period of seven years after termination of your employment contract / date of termination of your contract with us. However, we may need to retain some personal information for a longer period to satisfy legal, accounting or reporting requirements.
In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you.
Rights of access, correction, erasure, and restriction
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.
Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to request access to, correction, erasure, restriction or transfer of your personal information. You also have the right to reject to its processing. For further details on these rights, please refer to section 12 of our Data Protection Policy.
No fee usually required
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.
What we may need from you
We may 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.
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:
Annabel Staples
Partner
annabel.staples@sinclairgibson.com
Tel: 020 7242 9700
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