Privacy Policy

Candidate Privacy Notice

What is the purpose of this document?

United Kingdom National Nuclear Laboratory Limited (“UKNNL”) is committed to protecting and respecting the privacy and security of your personal data.

UKNNL (also referred to as ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’) is the controller and responsible for your personal data.

This privacy notice describes how we may collect personal data about you when you apply to work with us. It makes you aware of how and why your personal data will be used for the purposes of the recruitment exercise and how long it will be retained for.

This privacy notice supplements any other notices (including on our website) and is not intended to override them.

Your duty to inform us of changes

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if any of your personal data you have provided to us changes during your relationship with us.

What personal data do we hold about you?

In connection with your application to work with us, we will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal data about you:

The information you have provided in your CV and covering letter.
The information you have provided to register with our online Applicant Tracking System, including name, title, address, telephone number, personal email address, date of birth, gender, nationality, right to work information, employment history, educational history, qualifications, current job and salary, current notice period, interests and hobbies, and other information supporting your application in whatever medium (including video).
Where applicable, the output of any aptitude tests conducted on our behalf by third parties.
The information collected or produced by us in the course of the assessment process, including from any sifting exercise, assessment centre or interview process.
Any information you provide to us for the purposes of pre-employment checks, including for the purposes of security and vetting procedures, such as copies of your ID documentation, NI number, previous names, nationality, place of birth and employment history and, as may be processed on our behalf, in connection with any applicable visa application.

We may also collect, store and use the following special categories of personal data:

Information about your health, including any medical conditions, if you are asked to participate in pre-employment health checks.
Information about criminal convictions and offences.

How is your personal data collected?

We collect personal data about candidates from the following sources:

You, the candidate.
Where applicable, a recruitment agency.
United Kingdom Security Vetting (“UKSV”) and the Office for Nuclear Regulation (“ONR”) for the purposes of security clearance.
Disclosure and Barring Service (or equivalent) in respect of criminal convictions.
Providers of occupational health services and screening (including drugs and alcohol screening).
Your named referees (including previous employers, education or training providers).
Our provider of aptitude testing, if that is applicable to the role you have applied for.
Educational establishments.

How do we process your personal data?

Our IT system is certified to ISO27001 and Cyber Essentials. Our IT systems are monitored for any malicious activity.

We will use the personal data collected about you for the purposes of:

Assessing your skills, qualifications, and suitability for opportunities you have applied for.
Carrying out background and reference checks, where applicable.
Communicating with you about the recruitment process.
Keeping records related to our recruitment processes.
Complying with legal or regulatory requirements, in particular our obligations to the ONR.

It is in our legitimate interests to process personal data about you in order to decide whether to appoint you to the vacancy or opportunity that we have identified, and that you have applied for. We also needs to process your personal data for the purposes of entering into a contract of employment (or other contractual arrangement) if your application is successful.

In what circumstances will we use special categories of personal data?

We will use your particularly sensitive personal data in the following ways:

We 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 during a test, assessment or interview.
We will use health data collected in order to ensure compliance with legal obligations, including those relating to nuclear security and health and safety.
We will use information about your race or national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, or your sexual life or sexual orientation, to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting.

Criminal convictions

We will collect information about your criminal convictions history in order to be satisfied that you are suitable for the role you have applied for. In particular:

We have legal obligations to comply with the requirements of the ONR, and other regulatory bodies, to carry out criminal record checks.
All roles with us involve potential access to sensitive nuclear information, and so you will be asked to seek a basic disclosure of your criminal records history.

We have in place appropriate policies and safeguards required in relation to the processing of such data.

Automated decision-making

There are limited occasions where we will use pre-defined shortlisting criteria to conduct an automated search of candidates who have applied for a particular role. The search criteria will be limited to the right to work information, security vetting, experience and/or qualifications that you provide on our Applicant Tracking System. The purposes of this automated search are to make a shortlist of potential candidates with the intention of entering into a contract of employment with a job applicant.

Your general rights in relation to your personal data are explained in more detail later in this privacy notice. Additionally, in circumstances where the automated shortlisting criteria outlined above have been used, you also have the right to request a review of any decision to exclude your application solely on the basis of the right to work information, security vetting, experience and/or qualifications you provided, in particular where you believe inaccurate information was used. Such requests should be addressed to our Data Protection Officer (“DPO”) (see below).

Who do we share your personal data with?

We will share your personal data with the following third parties for the purposes of processing your application:

The provider of our online recruitment tool for the purposes of operating our Applicant Tracking System.
Relevant bodies who we engage for the purposes of verifying security checks.
Occupational health providers for the purposes of arranging pre-employment health screening.
Approved suppliers in connection with aptitude testing solutions which may involve your personal data being processed outside of the UK. Where this is the case (such as Gartner Inc who provides an online aptitude testing solution under the brand name ‘SHL’. The SHL website is hosted in the USA (and therefore outside the UK) and your personal data will be processed outside the UK). We ensure that the overseas transfer of your personal data outside of the UK is subject to appropriate safeguards.
Approved suppliers in connection with, right to work checks and where applicable, visa applications.

We reserve the right to substitute providers of the above services with other third party providers.

All our third-party service providers are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal data. We do not allow 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.

How long will we process your personal data?

We will retain your personal data in relation to any particular vacancy (including data processed using our online Applicant Tracking System) for as long as is necessary for the purposes for which it was collected. If you have any questions about how long we keep your personal data for, please contact our DPO (see below).

Our Applicant Tracking System allows you to configure your profile settings, via a specific opt-in process, for the personal data in your profile to be retained by us for the purposes of future job-matching activity. If you choose to opt-in to have your data retained for matching with future job roles, it will be retained for as long as is necessary for the purposes for which it was collected.

If you have expressed a general interest in working with us, and agreed that your personal data should be retained for the purpose of future vacancies, you are entitled to withdraw your agreement to us retaining your personal data by writing to our DPO (see below). Otherwise, it will be retained for as long as is necessary for the purposes for which it was collected.

Following the applicable retention period, we will anonymise or securely delete or destroy your personal data.

At all times, we reserve the right to anonymise or securely delete or destroy any candidate profiles from our Applicant Tracking System that have not been active for a period of 6 months or more.

If you are appointed to a role with us, the personal data you have provided during the recruitment process will also be incorporated into your personnel record. Your personal data would then be used by us in accordance with our privacy policy and other relevant procedures. You will also be referred to our privacy notice for employee, workers and contractors explaining how your data will be used during and after your working relationship with us.

Your rights in connection with your personal data.

In certain circumstances and subject to limitations, by law, you have the right to:

Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a ‘data subject access request’). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
Request correction of the personal data held about you. This enables you to request that any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you is corrected.
Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for continuing to process it.
Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or that of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground.
Request the restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal data about you, for example, if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
Request the transfer of certain personal data to another party.

If you want to exercise any of the above rights in relation to your personal data, please contact our DPO (see below). You will not normally need to pay a fee to exercise any of these rights. However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded or excessive. We may refuse to comply with the request in certain circumstances.

Data Protection Officer

We have appointed a DPO to oversee compliance with data protection legislation. If you have any questions about this privacy notice, or how we handle your personal data, please contact the DPO: d.po@UKNNL.com.

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) or judicial levels. We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.