Privacy policy

You must read this notice and any other privacy notice provided 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.

Who we are

The Forces Employment Charity gathers and processes your personal information through this privacy notice in compliance with the relevant data protection regulations and laws. This notice provides the necessary information regarding your rights and our obligations and explains how, why, and when we process your data.

The Forces Employment Charity’s registered office is on the First Floor, Mountbarrow House, 12 Elizabeth Street, London SW1W 9RB. We are a ‘Registered Charity’ in England and Wales (1061212) and Scotland (SC039262). We are a company registered in England and Wales under company number (03270369). We are registered on the Information Commissioner’s Office Register; registration number (Z7498943) and act as the data controller and processor when processing your data. Our dedicated Data Protection Controller can be contacted at Forces Employment Charity Head Office, First Floor, Mountbarrow House, 12 Elizabeth Street, London SW1W 9RB; email [email protected]

Data protection principles

We will comply with the data protection principles under the data protection legislation. This says that the personal information we hold about you must 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

Information that we collect

The Forces Employment Charity processes your personal information to meet our legal, statutory and contractual obligations and to provide you with our services. We will never collect any unnecessary personal data from you and will not process your information in any way other than as specified in this notice.

The personal data that we collect is:

  • Full name
  • Title, rank and service
  • Date of birth
  • Service number
  • Enlistment and discharge dates
  • Campaigns served
  • Employment history
  • Home address
  • Personal and business email
  • Financial concerns
  • Evidence of your right to work in the UK/immigration status
  • Family, lifestyle and social circumstances
  • Copies of driving licence, passport, birth and marriage certificates, decree absolute
  • Home telephone number and mobile telephone number
  • Particular category data – i.e. health/medical information, information about criminal convictions/allegations and offences (not in all cases; only where applicable to the service programme offered).

We collect information in the following ways:

  • Paper and website registrations
  • Telephone disclosures
  • Employment CVs
  • Employee data
  • Review meetings
  • Group events
  • Email
  • Referral information
  • Web chat and webinars
  • Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Questionnaire

The Forces Employment Charity wants to meet the aims set out in our Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion commitment. This includes not discriminating under the Equality Act 2010. Forces Employment Charity has introduced an equity and diversity questionnaire to help us maintain best practices and identify barriers.

The information on the questionnaire will be used for evaluation purposes only to ensure we meet our Equity and Diversity Policy. We will play no part in the registration or service delivery.

This information will include Special Category Data and is optional. The information we will collect will be:

  • Gender
  • Age
  • Ethnicity
  • Sexual orientation
  • Disability

The analysis intends to establish if there are different success rates between genders, people of other sexual orientations, ages, different ethnic backgrounds or faiths, and people with disabilities. If there are differences in these areas, it will enable action to be taken to ensure that no group is mistreated.

All questions are optional. You are not obliged to answer any of these questions, but the more information you supply, our evaluation will be more effective. All information provided will be treated in the strictest confidence.

With the help of feedback from our community groups, beneficiaries, and staff, we will continue to develop arrangements to review and evaluate the effectiveness of our employment and service delivery policies. If our evaluation reveals any policy gaps, we will take necessary action.

How we use your data (our legal basis for processing)

The Forces Employment Charity takes your privacy very seriously. She will never disclose or share your data outside our Partners listed in this notice without your consent unless required by law. We only retain your data for as long as necessary and for the purposes specified in this notice. Where you have consented to us providing you with marketing, you can withdraw this consent anytime.

The purposes and reasons for processing your data are detailed below:

  • With your consent, we collect and process your data in the performance of a contract or to provide an employment service to you as a client/beneficiary.
  • We collect and process your data in the performance of a government contract to provide an employment service to you as a client/beneficiary under legitimate interest.
  • We collect and store your data as part of our legal obligation for business accounting and tax purposes.
  • We will occasionally send you marketing information where we have assessed that it benefits you as a client/beneficiary and is in our best interests. Such information will be non-intrusive and is processed on the grounds of legitimate interests.

Your rights

The law requires us to tell you about your rights and our obligations to you regarding the processing and controlling your data. We do this now by requesting you read the information provided at ICO

You have the right to access any personal information that the Forces Employment Charity processes about you and to request information about:

  • What personal data do we hold about you
  • The purposes of the processing
  • The categories of personal data concerned
  • The recipients to whom the personal data has/will be disclosed
  • How long do we intend to store your data for
  • If we did not collect the data directly from you, information about the source/provider

Suppose you believe that we hold any incomplete or inaccurate data about you. In that case, you have the right to ask us to correct and complete the information, and we will strive to do so as quickly as possible unless there is a valid reason for not doing so, at which point you will be notified.

You also have the right to request the erasure of your personal data or to restrict processing (where applicable) in accordance with the data protection laws and to object to any direct marketing from us. Where applicable, you have the right to data portability of your information and be informed about any automated decision-making we may use (currently, Forces Employment Charity does not use any automated decision-making processes).

If we receive a request from you to exercise any of the above rights, we will ask you to verify your identity before acting on the request to ensure that your data is protected and kept secure.

Sharing and disclosing your personal information

We do not share or disclose your personal information without your consent other than for the purposes specified in this notice or where there is a legal requirement. The Forces Employment Charity uses third parties (partners) to provide and enhance our services and business functions; however, all processors acting on our behalf only process your data by instructions from us and comply fully with this privacy notice, the data protection laws and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.

We only share your data with recognised partners appropriate to your specific support programme. Our partners may include those listed below, but there is a broader support network that we may work with to support individual cases. We will keep you informed of partners linked within your specific programme:

Contract partners

  • The MOD. As a sub-contractor, delivering the Career Transition Partnership to the MOD, we process data for all Armed Forces Service Leavers.
  • Right Management is part of our contract for delivering the Career Transition Partnership service for the Ministry of Defence (MOD). We jointly process personal information on Service Leaver clients two years before leaving the service and two years post-discharge; this data is used specifically in employment support and job finding. Details are at https://www.right.com
  • Right Management, as part of our Ex-Forces Programme, hosts the database system we use to process data. This allows clients the opportunity to access RightJob and other benefits as veterans.
  • NHS England is part of our contract for delivering Op NOVA. Details of how they process your personal and special category data are at NHS England.

Other partners and organisations we work with:

  • Cognizant Foundation. Details of their Privacy Policy are at Cognizant
  • Armed Forces Covenant. Details of their Privacy Policy are at the Armed Forces Covenant Trust
  • Details of their Privacy Policy are at Ingeus
  • Care after Combat – Details of their Privacy Policy are at CAC
  • Greenwich Hospital. Details are at Greenwich Hospital
  • The Royal Navy and Royal Marines Charity (RNRMC). Details of their Privacy Policy are at RNRMC
  • The Royal British Legion. Details of their Data Protection, Privacy and Communications Policy are at British Legion
  • ABF The Soldiers’ Charity. Details of their Privacy Policy are at ABF
  • RAF Benevolent Fund. Details of their Privacy Policy are at RAFBF
  • Poppy Scotland. Details are at Poppy Scotland
  • Department for Work. DWP
  • European Social Fund.Details of their Privacy Policy are at ESF
  • Lloyds Patriotic Fund. Details can be found here: Lloyds
  • Call of Duty Endowment. Details can be found here: Call of Duty Endowment
  • The Veterans’ Foundation. Details of their Privacy Policy are at the Veterans Foundation
  • Veterans Scotland. Details of their Privacy Policy are at Veterans Scotland
  • X-Forces. Details are at X Forces

Employers and training provided

An employer registered on Rightjob – to support your job searching activities, we will only share information you have consented to share with vetted employers.

Training providers – to support your job searching activities, we will only share information you have consented to share.

Safeguarding measures

The Forces Employment Charity takes your privacy seriously and takes every reasonable measure and precaution to protect and secure your data. We work hard to protect you and your information from unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction and have several layers of security measures in place, including:

  • Restricted access
  • IT authentication
  • Data encryption
  • Virtual Private Networks (VPN)
  • Firewalls
  • Controlled anti-virus/malware
  • Pseudonymisation
  • Security Cleared Employees

How we store personal data

Your data will be stored in a secure Information Technology system. We have implemented appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed unauthorised, altered or disclosed.

  • In addition, we limit access to your personal information to only Forces Employment Charity personnel, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions. Details of these measures are available upon request from our Data Protection Controller.
  • Third parties will only process your personal information according to our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to keep it secure in a contractual arrangement.
  • We have established procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

Contracted supplier

The Forces Employment Charity contracts a small number of suppliers to assist in ensuring your data is stored securely. All contractors meet the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

  • Salesforce is our central CRM system, storing all registrations and programme data. Their security information may be found here: Salesforce
  • 123formbuilderis used for our registration form and to upload proof of service. Once the form has been completed, it will be connected to Forces Employment Charity via a data centre in Frankfurt. This complies with current GDPR requirements – https://www.123formbuilder.com/secure-forms.html
  • Form Assembly is used for our registration form for Op NOVA. Once the form has been completed, it will be connected to Forces Employment Charity via a data centre in the UK. This complies with current GDPR requirements –https://www.formassembly.com/security/
  • Spanning prioritises the privacy and security of all personal data held by Forces Employment Charity, ensuring that it is backed up via a secure Data Centre in Dublin https://spanning.com/gdpr/
  • F-Secure, with the introduction of direct uploading of Proof of Service Forces Employment Charity, has invested in Virus and Malware protection to add a layer of security to protect your Personal Information. F-Secure scans all documents via a Data Centre in Dublin https://www.f-secure.com/gb-en/about-us/trust
  • Dotdigital is part of Forces Employment Charity marketing and feedback gathering. When you opt in to our newsletter, your data is stored on Dotdigital. Dotdigital has extensive expertise in protecting data, championing privacy, and complying with complex regulations. https://dotdigital.com/trust-center/gdpr/

Consequences of not providing your data

You are not obligated to provide your personal information to The Forces Employment Charity; however, as this information is required to provide you with our services and legitimate interests, we cannot offer some/all our services without it.

Legitimate interests

As noted in this notice’s ‘How We Use Your Personal Data’ section, we occasionally process your personal information under the legitimate interest’s legal basis. Where this is the case, we have carried out a thorough Legitimate Interests Assessment (LIA) to ensure that we have weighed your interests and any risk posed to you against our interests, ensuring that they are proportionate and appropriate.

How long we keep your data

The Forces Employment Charity only retains personal information for as long as necessary, and we have strict review and retention policies to meet these obligations. Under UK tax law, we must keep your primary personal data (name, address, and contact details) for at least six years plus the current year.

Where you have consented to us using your details for direct marketing, we will keep such data until you notify us otherwise and withdraw your consent.

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal information for the purposes 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 or new purpose, we will notify you and explain the legal basis that allows us to do so.

Special categories data

Owing to the provision requirements of some of our more specialised services, the Forces Employment Charity sometimes needs to process sensitive personal information (known as particular category data) about you, such as information about your health. Where we collect such information, we will only request and process the minimum necessary for the specified purpose and identify a compliant legal basis.

Do we need your consent?

We do not need your consent if we use special categories of your personal information for the reasons outlined above:

In limited circumstances, we will request your written consent to process specific susceptible data if needed. If we do so, we will provide you with full details of the information we would like and why we need it so that you can carefully consider whether you wish to consent. You should be aware that it is not a condition of your contract with us that you agree to any request for consent from us.

Information about criminal convictions

We will only use information relating to criminal convictions or alleged criminal behaviour where the law requires us to do so. This can arise when we must comply with the law or for another reason where there is a substantial public interest in us doing so.

Less commonly, we will, if necessary, use information relating to criminal convictions or alleged criminal behaviour where it is needed about legal claims, where it is required 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 will only collect information about criminal convictions or allegations of criminal behaviour where appropriate, given the nature of the role and where we can legally do so. Where applicable, we will collect information about criminal convictions/allegations as part of the specific programme or if you are notified of such information directly while on one of our programmes.

Recruitment

We will collect your details, including but not limited to your name and contact details (together with your e-mail address) and other relevant information from your Curriculum Vitae (“CV”). On occasion, this will also include sensitive personal information such as details of criminal convictions and ethnic origin. When we receive your details and CV electronically, this may be through a direct application on our website or an application you have made through a third-party job board.

We will likely obtain further personal information about you during our relationship with you. This information will be accepted from you directly.

Our standard terms of business state that we retain applicant data such as CVs, interview notes and particular category data (information on criminal convictions, biometric data, etc.) for the specific role you apply for and that, as controllers of your data, you will inform you if we plan to retain your CV on file to notify you about potential future roles.

We will hold or store your personal information for six months once the position has been successfully filled.

Duty to inform

The personal information we hold about you must be accurate and current. Please let us know if your information changes during your time with us.

Lodging a complaint

The Forces Employment Charity only processes your personal information in compliance with this privacy notice and relevant data protection laws. If, however, you wish to raise a complaint regarding processing your personal data or are unsatisfied with how we have handled your information, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority.

 

The Forces Employment Charity

Data Protection Controller

First Floor, Mountbarrow House

12 Elizabeth Street

London SW1W 9RB

[email protected]

 

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Tel: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745 (National Rate)

Fax: 01625 524 510

Cookie notice

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Cookies are widely used to make websites work or to work more efficiently, and our site relies on cookies to optimise user experience and for features and services to function correctly.

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Review of this Privacy Notice

We may update this privacy notice from time to time as necessary. The terms that apply to you are those posted here on our website on the day you use our website. We advise you to print a copy for your records.

If you have any questions regarding our privacy policy, please get in touch with us by email: [email protected]

 

March 2024

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