This notice provides details of what information we collect from you, what we do with it and who it might be shared with. This notice does not form part of your contractual terms of employment. It applies to all current and former employees regardless of length of service and may be amended at any time.
Identity and contact details of the controller and the data protection officer
Falkirk Council is the data controller. You can contact the data protection officer at:
Frequently asked questions
Why do we collect this information?
We need to process data to enter into an employment contract with you and to meet our obligations under your employment contract. For example, we need to process your data to pay you and to administer benefit and pension entitlements.
In some cases, we need to process data to ensure we are complying with our legal obligations. For example we are required to check your right to work in the UK, to deduct tax, to comply with health and safety laws and to enable you to take periods of leave to which you are entitled. For certain posts, it is necessary to carry out criminal records checks to ensure individuals are permitted to carry out the role in question.
Throughout the period of your employment with us, and for as long as is necessary to meet our legal obligations after that, we will process personal data about you for the purposes connected with your employment and the termination of your employment.
The information is being collected for the following purposes:
- Managing the employment relationship and dealing with any issues arising from it through the Council's employment related policies
- Payment of salaries, expenses, employee benefits and statutory payments
- Equalities Monitoring to maintain and promote equality in the workplace
- Health & Safety and ensuring a safe work environment
- Providing facilities such as ICT, communication systems, voice recording and car parking provision and monitoring usage of these
The legal basis for each purpose is set out below:
| Legal basis |
Purpose |
| Consent |
|
| Performance of a contract |
1, 2, 4, 5 |
| Legal obligation |
2 (where statutory), 3, 4 |
| Vital interests |
|
| Task carried out in the public interest |
1 |
| Legitimate interests |
|
What information do we collect about you?
We collect:
- Your name, address and contact information including email address and telephone number, date of birth and gender
- Details of your qualifications, skills, experience and employment history, including start and end dates, with previous employers and with Falkirk Council
- References obtained during recruitment
- Professional memberships and qualifications including membership numbers
- Registration with professional bodies including membership/registration numbers
- A copy of your driving licence, insurance details and any driving convictions
- Information about your marital status*, dependants*, next of kin and emergency contacts
- Information about your nationality and entitlement to work in the UK
- Information about your criminal record where this is required for your post
- Information about your remuneration, including entitlement to benefits such as pensions
- Details of your bank account and national insurance number
- The terms and conditions of your employment including employment dates, details of job titles and duties
- Details of your schedule (days and hours of work and working hours) and attendance at work
- Details about leave applied for or taken by you, including holiday, sickness absence, family leave* and career breaks, and the reasons for leave
- Applications for flexible working, employee benefits and contractual changes
- Details of any disciplinary, grievance, capability or dignity at work procedures in which you have been involved, including any warnings issued to you and related correspondence
- Information about performance and performance appraisals and training you have participated in
- Information about your medical or health conditions*, including whether or not you have a disability for which we need to make reasonable adjustments including occupational health information
- Details of trade union membership*
- Equality monitoring information including information about your ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, sexual orientation and transgender status *
- Information confirming you have read and understood our policies and procedures and your compliance with these
- Information about your use of our information and communication systems and emails and messages passing through our systems
- Accident and incident reporting
- CCTV images and/or voice recordings where these are used in your workplace, or in the course of your duties, for security, training, monitoring or enforcement purposes
- Images and/or voice recordings of internal and external online meetings which you attend in the course of your duties
- Your car registration number for parking permits and mileage payments
- Your photograph for your ID badge and for other purposes the council deems necessary
- Other photographs and videos you have consented to for e-learning/training and promotional purposes
- Information about additional posts you may hold to identify any conflict of interest
- Any other information about you that you have given to us
We also keep copies of your communications with us and our responses.
Employee monitoring may be carried out for operational requirements such as providing IT facilities, lone working, using mobile devices, voice recording and vehicle trackers.
Managers can request access to IT records, including phone records or emails, for relevant work-related reasons. Emails marked personal or that are clearly personal in nature will not be accessed, unless in exceptional circumstances.
Reasons for access may include:
- suspected misuse of IT systems or resources
- information required for council business where there is no other way of accessing this (for example if you are on long term sick leave)
- to evidence misconduct (for example suspected fraudulent activity or sexual harassment).
*Some special categories of personal data, such as information about health or medical conditions is processed to carry out employment law obligations (such as those in relation to employees with disabilities and for health and safety purposes). Information about trade union membership is processed to allow us to make payroll deductions for union subscriptions.
*Where you provide other special categories of personal data, such as information about ethnic origin, religious belief, disability, sexual orientation or transgender status, this is done to allow us to better perform the equality duty. Equal opportunities statistical data is anonymised. You are entirely free to decide whether or not to provide such data and there are no consequences of not doing so.
Where do we collect information from?
We collect information from you:
- Through paper, electronic and telephone correspondence with you, through forms you have completed and interviews and meetings you have attended
- From CCTV and other recording devices
- From any representatives you have asked to act on your behalf such as but not limited to solicitors, employment tribunals, trade unions and ACAS
- From application forms on recruitment websites such as but not limited to MyJobScotland
- From your passport, driving licence or other identity documents
In some cases, we collect personal data about you from third parties such as
- Referees who you have given us permission to contact including previous employers
- The Government’s online right to work checking service and other associated sites
- Criminal record check providers such as Disclosure Scotland as permitted by law
- Medical professionals including our Occupational Health provider
- Other members of staff, clients or customers through complaints or grievances
- Professional bodies such as but not limited to the General Teaching Council for Scotland and the Scottish Social Services Council
- Employee benefit providers where you have provided your data on their website such as the Childcare Vouchers Scheme or Cycle to Work Scheme
- Drivers licence check providers such as DriverCheck and Jaama.
Data is stored in a range of different places, including in your personnel file, in our HR & Payroll management systems and in other IT systems including the email system and Microsoft 365.
Who might we share your information with?
We will keep your information safe and secure. We will have systems, processes and training designed to achieve this.
We will not share your information internally unless this is necessary for the performance of duties and Council business. For example, your Service may share details about any absences with Human Resources if dealing with absence management.
We may also share your data with:
- Any person to which we are legally obliged to disclose any of your personal data including HM Revenue & Customs, The Department for Work and Pensions, The Child Support Agency and The Health & Safety Executive
- Any person we appoint to provide services to or on behalf of us. This includes those who process data on our behalf who can be involved in delivering or assisting in or advising on the provision or implementation of benefits in connection with your employment including BACS Payments Limited, Occupational Health, Employee Benefits and Training Providers, driver licence checking providers, and companies we use to hold Business Continuity information
- Law enforcement (Police) and other regulatory bodies such as Scottish Social Services Council, General Teaching Council for Scotland and Disclosure Scotland
- Our external advisers
- Grant funders, such as Scottish Government, where your employment is related to that funding and the sharing is required for audit purposes.
- NHS Forth Valley where your work is connected with the work of the Integration Joint Board
- Other employer organisations where there are shared service or supervision arrangements that you work in connection with
- Pension providers (or potential pension providers) including but not limited to Scottish Public Pensions Agency and Falkirk Council Pension Fund
- Trade Unions, on the basis of collective bargaining, if you are a member of that trade union
- Any person specified by you, where you ask us to provide a reference or any other information to that person such as financial institutions or prospective employers
- In the context of the transfer of part our business, to a prospective new employer, for example if the Council decided to set up an arms length organisation to deliver part of its services
- The Council has a duty to protect public funds. We may check your information within the Council for verification purposes and/or for the prevention of fraud.
- The Scottish Government for the annual school staff data census, Further information can be found in the staff census publication.
We may share your information with other organisations where we are required to do so for the purposes of the prevention or detection of crime
The Council considers that, being an organisation partly funded by Council Tax, it has a legitimate interest to data match employee records with Council Tax records. This is covered in your employment contract.
Registration with the Council's ICT services means that your name, job title, work location, work email address and work telephone number will be displayed on the internal council telephone directory. You can elect to add a photo to this profile which will not be used for any other purpose.
Falkirk Council is subject to freedom of information (FOI) legislation. Often we receive requests which seek disclosure of information about members of staff. Such requests are assessed carefully and we will only release staff names and job titles in response to FOI requests if doing so is compatible with our obligations under data protection law. Where possible, we will not release direct work contact details. As a general rule we will release the identities of staff who are working at the level equivalent to, or above, Service Manager /Head & Depute Head Teacher unless there are particular reasons to depart from this approach (such as where staff are involved in areas of work where disclosing their identity could endanger them). We will not normally release details of staff working below this level.
We will not voluntarily release non-work-related information about members of staff such as home address, nor will we voluntarily release information where this relates to the member of staff being a service user rather than in their capacity as an employee. This information is unlikely to fall within the scope of an FOI and would be covered by section 4 of the privacy notice.
Do you use any automated processes to make decisions about me?
The Council does not use profiling or automated decision-making processes in relation to employees. Some processes are semi-automated (such as anti-fraud data matching) but a human decision maker will always be involved before any decision is reached in relation to you.
Will we send your information outwith the UK?
We do not directly transfer your information outwith the UK. Where it becomes necessary to do so (for example, where one of our providers uses sub-contractors based outwith the UK) we would ensure appropriate safeguards are in place. Calls recorded by our call recording system (known as the CCNG/Alice system) will be held in the EEA for 90 days, unless we need to keep it for longer, for example to investigate a complaint.
How long do we keep hold of your information?
We keep your information as long as required by law or by our business requirements. We have a Business Classification Scheme in place which sets out the types of records we hold, and how long we hold them - you can access the relevant part of the scheme below.
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Human Resources
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Do I have to provide my personal data to you?
You have some obligations under your employment contact to provide us with data.
Where the data is needed to enter into a contract with you, or carry out that contract, if you do not provide this data we may not be able to enter into, or continue, the contract. For example, if you do not provide your bank details, we may not be able to pay you.
In some circumstances, the provision of your data is a statutory requirement. This includes:
- Documentation confirming your right to work in the UK – if you don't provide this, we may not be able to employ you, or we may need to terminate your contract
- Statutory information you must provide to us if you wish to take maternity, paternity, adoption, shared parental leave or parental leave, or claim statutory payments in relation to such leave. If you don’t provide this, we may not be able to comply with our legal obligations and / or provide relevant benefits to you
- Gender, Date of Birth, National Insurance Number and Address details in order that we can create a valid payroll record for Income Tax and National Insurance purposes
You do not need to provide us with equality monitoring data (ethnic origin, religion, disability, sexual orientation or transgender status). However, if you do so this will be held in the strictest confidence and used to help us comply with our Public Sector Equality Duty.
What are my rights in relation to the information held about me?
You have the following rights:
- To see any information held about you by making a subject access request.
- To withdraw consent at any time, where the legal basis for processing is consent.
- To data portability, where the legal basis for processing is (i) consent or (ii) performance of a contract.
- To request rectification or erasure of your information, where data protection legislation allows this.
Do I have a right to complain about the way information has been used?
If you have a concern about the way we are collecting or using your personal data, please let us know and we will try to resolve this. If you are still concerned, you can contact the Information Commissioner:
This notice was last updated in December 2024.