This privacy notice explains why we need to obtain, hold and use personal information about you during recruitment and selection, throughout your employment or volunteering and for a period of time after your employment or volunteering has ceased. It also explains how its use is compliant with data protection legislation.
Why do we collect information about you?
If you are an employee or volunteer, we collect personal information from you for the following purposes:
- Recruitment and selection, including checking your right to work in the UK, employment history, qualifications and unspent convictions
- Your health, safety and welfare
- Administration of out of pocket expenses
- Administration of your salary, pension, sickness, maternity, expenses payments and any other monies (employees only)
- Training and development requirements
- Equal opportunities monitoring
- Workforce planning, employee consultation, appraisals, disciplinary, grievance and conduct issues and promotion processes (employees only)
- Day to day management and administration of employees by line managers or of volunteers by volunteer coordinators
- Access control to our premises, car parks and other automated equipment/systems
- To fulfil our legal obligations
We keep and use this information to manage our relationship with you effectively, lawfully and appropriately, during the recruitment process, whilst you are working or volunteering for us, and after you have left. This includes using information to enable us to comply with the employment contract or volunteer commitment, any legal obligations, and pursue legitimate interests. In some cases, we will seek your prior consent to process your personal information.
The categories of the information that we collect, process, hold and share include:
- Identifiers such as your name, address, date of birth and national insurance number
- Information to determine your entitlement to work in the UK
- Photographic images
- Equality monitoring data, which may include racial and/or ethnic origin and information regarding sexual orientation
- Whether you have a disability for which the Service needs to make reasonable adjustments
- Data within access control systems
- Information relating to disciplinary, grievance or other investigations of a similar nature, including the problem-solving procedure for volunteers
- Footage captured by audio and video surveillance systems
- Employment and qualification details (employees only)
- Salary and wages information (employees only)
- Sickness and absence information (employees only)
- Health and wellbeing information (employees only)
- Tax and pension details (employees only)
- Contractual details relating to terms and conditions of service (employees only)
- Driving licence details
Who we share your information with
We outsource the administration of our promotion processes to RealWorld HR and their privacy notice can be found here.
Storing this information
The period that your information is kept for varies according to statutory requirements and other legitimate business reasons. We have set out these retention periods within our Information Asset Register, which is available upon request to the Information Governance Team if you do not have access to our intranet.
Your personal information is maintained securely at all times by the staff with responsibility for employee or volunteer records. We apply access control to ensure that only authorised staff are able to access your personal information.
Where do we get your information from?
You will have provided most of the personal employment or volunteer information that we process but we may also use information collected from third parties during recruitment, selection, employment, or volunteering. For example, the Disclosure and Barring Service for criminal record checks, referees to confirm suitability for post and doctors for medical reports.
Employee and volunteer monitoring
We have a duty to ensure high standards, to uphold these and to comply with the law, it is sometimes necessary to monitor the use of our resources, the conduct of our staff and volunteers, and processing of information. For further information, please refer to the procedures covering the following areas:
- Employee Code of Conduct
- Bullying & Harassment
- Attendance Management (sickness absence)
- Health & Wellbeing
- Occupational Health
- Discipline
- Grievance
- Email and Internet use
- CCTV
- Managing personal information
- Community volunteers
- Pre-employment and Security Checks
- Volunteer commitment
- Volunteer problem solving
Disclosure of personal information
We may disclose your information:
- to provide contact details (name, work location, telephone extension) both internally and to other local public sector organisations such as local authorities, health trusts or business partners, where this is relevant and appropriate to your role, via public directories containing information about services that we provide
- to other staff in connection with your employment or volunteering. For example, sharing reasonable adjustment information with line managers
- to administer salaries, pension, payroll or other monies, and for accounting/budgeting purposes to other organisations such as building societies in response to your authorised requests to provide details, firefighters’ and local government pension administrators (employees only)
- to provide or receive employment references to or from former or prospective future employers
- to obtain medical clearance from our occupational health provider, Health Partners
- to obtain clearance for return to work from our physiotherapy provider
- to obtain necessary DBS checks via our DBS check provider
- to obtain necessary driving licence checks from Drivetech
We will only make other non-routine disclosures:
- by law, when we are obliged to provide the information requested. For example, to the Inland Revenue, Child Support Agency, Asylum & Immigration Office
- by law, to support national fraud initiatives (NFI). For example, to the Audit Commission – this may involve your information being used in data matching exercises but we will advise you when such exercises are to take place
- to prevent and detect fraud/crime – we are under a duty to protect the public funds it administers and may use information you have provided for this purpose. We may also share information with other bodies administering or in receipt of public funds solely for this purpose
- for the assessment or collection of any tax or duty when we need to take legal advice for prospective legal proceedings. For example, to the Service’s insurers because of a claim being made by you or a customer/client with whom you have been involved as an employee
- in the course of disciplinary, grievance or other investigations of a similar nature, including the problem-solving procedure for volunteers
- to recover any monies you may owe the Service. We have an expectation that, as an employee or volunteer, you will not incur debts on the Service
- if you have given your consent
- in response to reference requests from prospective employers, educational organisations or other agencies with a legitimate interest
Requesting access to your personal data and your rights
Under data protection legislation, you have a number of rights with regard to your personal data. You have the right to:
- be informed of how we will process it
- request a copy of what we hold about you
- have it deleted (where we do not have a legal requirement to retain it)
- have it rectified, restricted
- object to us using it
- data portability (in certain circumstances)
Where we are processing data based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time.
To act on any of the above rights, or if you have any concerns about how we are using your personal information, please contact the Data Protection Officer (contact details below).
Contact details of the Data Protection Officer
Dorset & Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service is the data controller of data for purposes of data protection legislation.
If you would like to discuss anything in this privacy notice, please contact:
Data Protection Officer: Lisa Smith
Address: Dorset & Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service, Five Rivers Health & Wellbeing Centre, Hulse Road, Salisbury, SP1 3NR
Telephone: 01722 691000
Email: [email protected]
Further information
If you have concerns about the use of your personal data, the Information Commissioners Office is an independent body set up to uphold information rights in the UK. They can be contacted through their website: www.ico.org.uk or their helpline on 0303 123 1113, or in writing to: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
For more information about your rights: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/
To complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office: https://ico.org.uk/concerns/
Last Updated: April 2025