Product User Privacy Policy

v2.0 - 19/07/2023

Data Controller: The company or organisation (in most cases your employer or potential employer) or yourself requesting background screening services from Personnel Checks.

Data Processor: Personnel Checks Limited, One Cathedral Square, Cathedral Quarter, Blackburn, Lancashire, BB1 1FB. A registered umbrella body for the DBS and resale partner of Experian background screening products and services.

Registered Umbrella Body: Organisation registered with the DBS for the purposes of processing and submitting applications for DBS products from individual and employers not eligible to register with the DBS.

Personnel Checks are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This privacy policy explains how we look after your personal data when you subscribe to our background checking platform (our platform) .

It is important that you read this privacy policy together with any other privacy policy or fair processing policy we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy policy supplements other notices and privacy policies and is not intended to override them.

We operate the platform to enable organisations (our Customers) to request that we carry out background screening checks on certain individuals and for us to provide the results of those background screening checks. We are the controller and are responsible for your personal data if you subscribe and/or use our platform whilst acting on behalf of one of our Customers.

However, if you are the subject of a background screening check being carried out by one of our Customers (a Subject) and you subscribe to and/or use the platform, then our Customer is the controller of your personal data and we act as a processor only, collecting and processing your personal data as instructed by our Customer. We encourage you to review the privacy policy/notice provided to you by our Customer to understand how our Customer and we, as a service provider to our Customer, use your personal data. If you are a Subject, please review our Subject Privacy Policy.

Please note that links within our platform may take you to external websites which are not covered by this policy. We recommend that you check the privacy policies before submitting any personal information to such websites. We will not be responsible for the content, function or information collection policies of these external websites.

Our website and our platform are not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.

You can view our Subject Privacy Policy here.

What information do we collect about you and how do we collect it?

Information you provide to us

We may receive personal information about you whenever you contact us. For example, by doing the following:

Enquiring about our services, including subscribing for use of our platform.
Purchasing services through our platform.
Using our platform.
Telephoning, writing by post, emailing us or otherwise contacting us through our platform.

This information may include the following:

Normal identification information, which may include information such as your full name and date of birth.
Contact information, such as your postal address, email address and telephone number.
Additional information relevant to your use of our platform and our services, such as your marketing preferences, survey responses and feedback.
Payment information (this is securely collected and processed).

Information we collect about you on our platform

We collect information using cookies and other similar technologies to help distinguish you from other users of our platform. For more information about how and why we use cookies, please take a look at our Cookies Policy.

When you visit our platform, we may collect the following information:

What features you use within our platform.
Your IP address and general location.
Details of the hardware and software that you are using to access our platform.
Any passwords that you use on our platform.
A device identifier (cookie or IP address) for fraud prevention.
Details of your visits to our platform and the resources that you access, including, but not limited to, traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data.

Information we collect about you from other sources

We may collect information about you from other sources. This may include the following:

Publicly available information from sources such as Companies House and the Electoral Roll.
Information you have shared publicly, including on social media.

This list is not exhaustive, and, in specific instances, we may need to collect additional data for the purposes set out in this policy.

Sometimes you will have given your consent for other websites, services or third parties to provide information to us. This could include information from third parties that we work with to provide our services, such as payment processors, technical support companies and advertising companies. Whenever we receive information about you from these third parties, we will let you know what information we have received and how and why we intend to use it.

2. Our legal basis for processing your information

We take data protection seriously, so we have set out below exactly how and why we use your information, and what our legal basis is to be able to use your information. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with one of our Customers.
Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.

Providing our services

We process your personal information to provide the background screening services requested in order to perform the contracts we have entered into with our Customers. Should you decline to provide the requested information, this will affect our ability to provide the required services. Using your information in this context is necessary so that we can:

Provide you with information about the relevant contract.
Provide you with information about our services including access to our platform.
Verify your identity.
Make a decision as to whether to supply our services to the Customer.
Deal with any complaints you (or the Customer you act on behalf of) may have.
Contact you about any changes that we make to our services.
Administer our website and our platform, including troubleshooting problems, analysing statistics, conducting research and tests and keeping the website secure.
Administer your order and taking payments from you in relation to services we are to provide to the Customer.

Improving our business better

We always want to offer the best services and experience that we can. Sometimes this means we may use your information to find ways that we can improve what we do, or how we do it.

In this context, we will rely on the lawful basis of legitimate interests and will only use your information where it is necessary so that we can:

Review and improve our existing services and develop new ones.
Review and improve the performance of our systems, processes and staff (including training).
Improve our platform to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner.
Measure and understand the effectiveness of advertising we serve to you and others, and to deliver relevant advertising to you.

Contacting you

We want to stay in touch with you. Sometimes we may need to use the information that we have about you in order to respond to your questions or let you know about important changes. We will rely on the lawful basis of performing a contract and/or pursing our legitimate interests when we contact you.

We will only use your information in this respect where it is necessary so that we can:

Interact and respond to any communications you send us.
Let you know about any important changes to our business or policies.

Safeguarding you and others from harm

We may use your information where it is necessary to protect your interests, or the interests of others, in accordance with our legal obligations and the pursuit of legitimate interests. This may include in the event of criminality, such as identity theft, piracy or fraud.

Marketing (including promotional offers from us and third-party marketing)

We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around marketing and advertising.

We may use your personal data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decide which services and offers may be relevant for you (we call this marketing).

You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us or purchased our services and you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.

We will obtain your express opt-in consent before we send you unsolicited marketing communications or before we share your personal data with any third party for their marketing purposes.

You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you any marketing messages at any time by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you or by contacting us at any time.

Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not apply to personal data that you have provided to us as a result of purchasing our services.

If you fail to provide personal data

Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you, and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with the Customer (for example, to provide access to our platform or the services).

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal data 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 you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.

If we need to use your personal data 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 data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

3. Who has access to the data?

Your personal information may be shared internally for the purpose of the services being provided. All staff who access personal information have undergone relevant background screening checks and received appropriate training on the handling of confidential data and personal data. Access to all information is restricted by usernames and passwords.

Relevant information is shared with our partner company Cooke & Mellor Recruitment Limited for invoicing/receipting purposes only and IT staff if access to the data is necessary for the performance of their roles.

We may share your data with selected third parties. For example, we may share your information with:

Internet hosting providers who host the platform, related infrastructure, services and applications.
Contact management systems to send emails, instant messages, social media messages and SMS messages.
Organisations that securely process payments you make for our services through our platform.

There are certain exceptional circumstances in which we may disclose your information to third parties. This would be where we believe that the disclosure is:

Required by the law, or in order to comply with judicial proceedings, court orders or legal or regulatory proceedings.
Necessary to protect the safety of our employees, our property or the public.
Necessary for the prevention or detection of crime, including exchanging information with other companies or organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
Proportionate as part of a merger, or a business or asset sale. In the event that this happens, we will share your information with the prospective buyer involved and any prospective buyer may continue to use your personal data in accordance with this privacy policy.

If you wish to find out which third parties we share your personal data with, please contact the relevant Customer in order to find out what background screening checks they have asked us to carry out and which third parties we will share your personal data with as a result.

4. International transfers

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to and stored at a destination outside the United Kingdom (UK). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the UK, who work on behalf of us for one of our third party partners. Such staff may be engaged in, among other things, the fulfilment of your order, the processing of your payment details and the provision of the Services.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed (under data protection legislation) to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data.
Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved for use in the UK which give personal data the same protection it has in the UK.

Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the UK.

5. How does the organisation protect data?

We take the security of your data seriously and will always try to take appropriate precautions to protect it.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

We ensure there are appropriate technical controls in place, for example SSL website security, secure and monitored internal security features including passwords protected networks and restricted access to our management systems for authorised personnel only.

We have internal policies and controls in place to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by our employees in the proper performance of their duties.

We do use external third party software to process personal data and distribute marketing materials. Before implementing third party software, we ensure they meet all relevant regulations and legislation and that only we can access your data within these systems. Should a third party need to access a system to resolve an error or provide technical support this could only be carried out with our approval and supervision. Access is controlled through secure logins. We seek to provide maximum protection to your personal details.

6. For how long does the organisation keep data?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes for which we collected it, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.

By law, we have to keep basic information about our customers for six years after they cease being customers for tax purposes.

In some circumstances, you can ask us to delete your data: see paragraph 7 below for further information.

In some circumstances, we will anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

7. Your rights

Your legal rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. 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 that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
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 us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios:

If you want us to establish the data’s accuracy.
Where our use of the data is unlawful, but you do not want us to erase it.
Where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
You have objected to our use of your data, but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

No fee usually required

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these 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 your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Time limit to respond

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally, it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

8. Complaints

If you would like to raise a concern or make a complaint about how we process your personal data, please refer to our Dissatisfied Customer Procedure here.

You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”), the statutory body which oversees data protection law in the UK. Please visit the ICO website if you wish to lodge a complaint with the ICO.

9. Changes to our Privacy Policy

Any changes we make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by email. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our privacy policy.

This version was last updated in July 2023.

10. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our privacy practices, please contact our data privacy manager in the following ways:

Full name of legal entity: Personnel Checks Limited

Contact Form: https://www.personnelchecks.co.uk/contact-centre

Postal address: One Cathedral Square, Cathedral Quarter, Blackburn, Lancashire, England, BB1 1FB