Handling your personal details

The Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Kent is registered as a ‘data controller’ under the Data Protection Act 1998 because the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (OKPCC) receives, creates, holds and may disclose personal information about you and disposes of it in accordance with this Privacy Statement. 

 

Some employee services of the OKPCC are administered by Kent Police. Therefore, you may be redirected to that Organisation to exercise your rights in this regard. 

Personal information is data that on its own, or together with other information identifies you and relates to you.

 

The OKPCC collects and processes personal information relating to job applicants, employees (permanent and temporary), volunteers and independent members to administer the business/employment relationship.

 

Personal information includes information stored electronically and in manual filing systems.

 

‘Process’, ‘Processes’ and ‘Processing’ means just about any conceivable use of the information, including recording, storing, viewing, disclosing or disposal of.

 

The OKPCC is committed to protecting your personal information in all that it does and has put in place all reasonable technical and procedural controls required to protect your personal information for the whole of its life, in whatever format the information is held. All OKPCC staff are subject to a duty of confidentiality when handling this information.

 

Your privacy is also protected by law, which says that we can use your personal information only if we have a proper reason to do so. This includes sharing it outside of the OKPCC.

The law and other regulations treat some types of personal information as ‘special categories’. This includes, but is not limited to, information about racial or ethnic origin, sexual orientation and religious beliefs. They require higher levels of protection and the OKPCC must have further justification for its processing.

This Privacy Statement informs you of how personal information is obtained, used, retained and disposed of. The document is issued under your ‘right to be informed’.

The Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Kent:

The OKPCC

Kent Police Headquarters

Sutton Road

MAIDSTONE

ME15 9BZ

We will comply with data protection laws and give particular attention to the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation 2016 (Article 5:1-2). 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 we have told you about and limited only to those purposes;
• Accurate and kept up to date;
• Retained only as long as necessary; and
• Kept securely and confidentially.

 

    We collect and process a range of information about you. This could include:

 

• Your contact details, such as:

 

• Name;
• Address;
• Email address; and
• Telephone number.

 

• Personal specifics, including:

 

• Date of Birth;
• Gender; and
• Photograph (for ID card).

 

• The terms and conditions of your employment including your signature on your employment contract.

 

• Details of your education, qualifications, skills, experience and employment history, including start and end dates, with previous employers and us. We will also keep records of any previous training (where relevant to the role) or that which is completed whilst an employee of the OKPCC.

 

• Information about your remuneration, National Insurance number and contributions, tax codes, gross and net pay, deductions from pay arising from court orders and child maintenance orders, pensions (with Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) membership administered by Kent County Council). The personal information held by Kent County Council includes details of marriage, divorce and any pension sharing arrangements arising from that, including entitlement to benefits such as pensions or insurance cover.

 

• Details of your bank account including account name, sort code and account number.

 

• Information about your marital status, next of kin, dependents and emergency contacts.

 

• Information about your nationality and entitlement to work in the UK.

 

• Information about any criminal record, and also details of family members (not just next of kin and dependents) for vetting purposes.

 

• Details of your working schedule and attendance at work. This includes dates in respect of leave taken and reasons for that leave (holiday, sickness, family leave and sabbaticals).

 

• Details of any secondary business interests or pecuniary interests.

 

• Details of any disciplinary or grievance procedures in which you have been involved, including any warnings issued to you and related correspondence and Employment Tribunal or other civil actions casework relating to you.

 

• Assessments of your performance, including appraisals, performance reviews and ratings, performance improvement plans and associated correspondence.

 

• Information about medical or health conditions, including medical screening (sickness records are held by Kent Police Human Resources (HR) and medical screening data is held by Kent Police Occupational Health). Whether or not you have a disability for which we need to make reasonable adjustments.

 

• Information about accidents at work including accident reports, employers’ liability claims, records relating to the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR) and the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations.

 

• Equal opportunities monitoring information, including your ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health and religion or belief.

 

         We collect this information in a variety of ways. For example, personal information is collected through application forms, Curriculum Vitae, Proof of Identity Documents, from correspondence with you and through interviews, meetings or other assessments.

 

          In some cases, we may collect personal information about you from third parties, such as references from former employers, information from employment background check providers, credit reference agencies and criminal record checks permitted by law.

 

          Personal information is stored in a range of different places, including in your electronic personnel file, in Kent Police’s HR management systems and in other IT systems (including the Kent Police email system which we utilise).

We need to process personal information to enter into a business relationship/employment contract with you and to meet our obligations in this regard. For example, we need to process your personal information to assess suitability for a role or to provide you with your salary, to administer benefits, pension and insurance entitlements.

 

In some cases, we need to process your personal information to ensure that we are complying with our legal obligations. For example, we are required to check an individual’s entitlement to work in the UK, to deduct tax, to comply with health and safety laws, to administer periods of leave and to consult with employee representatives if any redundancies are proposed. It is also necessary to undertake criminal record checks to ensure that individuals are permitted to undertake a role.

 

In other cases, we have a legitimate interest in processing personal information to carry out adequate checks to assess suitability to have access to sensitive information, assets and equipment.

 

Processing personal information relating to individuals with whom there is a business relationship/employment contract allows us to:

 

• Run recruitment, re-grading and promotion processes;

 

• Maintain accurate and up-to-date employment records including contact details (such as emergency contacts and next of kin) and records of employee contractual and statutory rights;

 

• Operate disciplinary and grievance processes, to ensure acceptable conduct within the workplace;

 

• Operate a record of performance and related processes, to plan for career development, succession planning and workforce management purposes;

 

• Operate a record of sick absence management procedures, to allow effective workforce support and management and to ensure that employees are receiving the pay or other benefits to which they are entitled;

 

• Operate a record of other types of leave (including annual, maternity, paternity, adoption, IVF, parental and shared parental) to allow effective workforce management, to ensure that we comply with duties in relation to leave entitlement, and to ensure that employees are receiving the pay or other benefits to which they are entitled;

 

• Obtain Occupational Health (OH) advice, to ensure our compliance with duties in relation to reasonable adjustments, meet our obligations under health and safety law, and ensure that employees are receiving the pay or other benefits to which they are entitled;

 

• Ensure effective general HR, business and health and safety administration;

 

• Conduct employee engagement surveys;

 

• Support the provision of references on request;

 

• Respond to and defend against legal claims; and

 

• Maintain and promote equality in the workplace.

 

Some special categories of personal information, such as that about health or medical conditions, is processed to carry out employment law obligations (such as those in relation to reasonable adjustments and for health and safety purposes). Information about Trade Union membership is processed to allow us to operate staff-deductions for subscriptions.

 

Where we process other special categories of personal information, such as ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health, religion or belief, this is done for the purposes of equal opportunities monitoring as permitted by the Data Protection Act 2018. Some of these are optional and require consent - you can withdraw consent at any time.

Access to personal information is restricted to only those staff that ‘need to know’.

 

However, we will share your personal information on this basis to administer the relationship and enable the OKPCC to fulfil its contractual and/or legal obligations. We may also consider it necessary to share your information in exceptional circumstances, such as where we have immediate concerns for your (or someone else’s) safety or welfare.

 

The OKPCC does not share your personal information with, or sell it to, organisations and companies for marketing purposes.

The OKPCC does not use automated systems that have no human involvement to process any of your personal information.

 

Data Protection law holds all countries in the European Economic Area (EEA) to the same high standards. The OKPCC does not transfer personal information outside of the EEA.

 

•            Your information may be shared internally, including with your line management and other managers where necessary.

•           Your personal information will be shared with the third party that is Kent Police, including for example HR, Vetting and Payroll, which process personal information on our behalf. Kent Police may also share your information with Kent County Council in relation to the administration of the LGPS.

•           Your personal information may be shared with employee representatives in the context of collective consultation on redundancy.

•           Your personal information may also be shared with other third parties in order to obtain pre-employment references from employers, obtain employment background checks from third-party providers and obtain necessary criminal record checks.

 

•          We take the security of your personal information seriously. There are internal policies and controls in place to protect your personal information from loss, accidental destruction, inappropriate disclosure, misuse and inappropriate access.

 

•         Where we engage third parties to process personal information on our behalf, such as Kent Police or other relevant public bodies, they are under a duty of confidentiality and are obliged to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security of personal information.

We will retain your personal information in accordance with the Disposal and Retention Schedules of the OKPCC and where appropriate that of Kent Police.

Should you choose not to give us your personal information, it may delay or prevent us from effectively dealing with you. You will have some obligations to provide your personal information when applying for a job or entering into a business relationship/employment contract with us. You may also have to provide us with data in order to exercise your statutory rights.

 

If you give us personal information about someone else, you must do so only with that person’s authorisation, which may need to be provided to us in writing. You should ensure that they are informed about how we collect, use, disclose and retain their personal information.