Privacy Statement
This statement explains how and why the Council processes personal data – personal information - about its employees.
Who are we?
Dundee City Council is a local authority established under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994. Its head office is at City Square, Dundee, DD1 3BY. You can contact our Data Protection Officer by post at this address, by email at: infogov@dundeecity.gov.uk and by telephone on 01382 434206.
Why do we need personal information about you and what do we do with it?
During the course of your employment we will collect a range of personal information about you. We use that information to manage the employment relationship between you and the Council, to ensure that we meet our contractual obligations, and to enable us to meet our wider legal duties as an employer and to protect the public interest.
We use:-
- identifier and contact information - your date of birth and National Insurance number, address, email address and telephone number, emergency contacts, - to communicate with you and any emergency contact given by you.
- your banking details to process payments relating to your employment
- your terms and conditions of employment to help ensure that you are properly managed and that you receive the salary and allowances to which you are entitled
- your employment history, with the Council and previous employers, your qualifications and your skills to assess your suitability to perform particular roles and tasks, to help identify learning and development needs and to calculate your pay
- details of your periods of leave taken, including annual leave, maternity leave and sickness absence and your qualification for particular categories of leave e.g. maternity and paternity to ensure you receive the correct entitlements
- information about your health to ensure that we comply with our statutory responsibilities, support your health and wellbeing and manage attendance across the council, including to establish reasonable adjustments where an employee has a disability.
- records of Employee Performance Development Reviews, supervision and any similar performance discussions to manage performance and assist your learning and development
- information about your learning and development, including qualifications, skills and knowledge gained, learning requested, learning undertaken and learning plans to manage and support your learning and development
- information about your involvement in health and safety procedures e.g. any accident or near miss reports and risk assessments to manage and discharge our contractual and statutory responsibilities effectively
- documents confirming your entitlement to work in the UK to satisfy the legal requirement to do so
- The information contained in your Register of Interests (if you have been asked to complete one), to manage actual or potential conflicts of interest between you and your family or household and the Council.
If you are involved in the operation of any of the Council’s procedures for managing the employment relationship e.g. attendance management, discipline or grievance, your personal information may be recorded in case notes and correspondence and used in considering and making decisions associated with the application of those procedures.
If you have a job which requires you to be a member of the PVG Scheme or to undergo specific pre-employment checks, we will hold information about the checks.
Your use of council equipment and premises may result in the collection of some or all of the following information which may be used in the operation of the Council’s procedures for managing the employment relationship:-
- Dialled telephone numbers and the date, time and duration of incoming and outgoing calls.
- Websites visited, including dates and times of visits.
- Emails sent and received, including dates, times, subject, recipient and sender
- Details of any media files stored on our network
- The use of unencrypted usb devices
- Clock in times when using time recording equipment
- System login times
- Door entry system recordings
- CCTV footage
You may be invited to disclose personal or ‘protected’ characteristic information as defined in the Equality Act 2010 and other equalities related information. This information is used in an anonymised form for monitoring and to assist the Council to meet its statutory duties and achieve its policy objectives in respect of promoting equality of opportunity in employment
Where does the Council get personal information about you?
The Council will get most of the information about you from you. We may collect personal information about you from third parties e.g. such as references supplied by former employers and the results of examinations or assessments relating to your employment by educational or certification bodies. Our occupational health adviser carries out health assessments and surveillance and will report the results. We may be given, with your consent, information from your trade union to allow us to deduct your membership contributions.
What is the legal basis for the Council using your personal information?
We process your personal information for the performance of our employment contract with you and, at the recruitment stage, for taking steps to form that contract. The Council also has a legitimate interest in processing the information to manage its employment contract with you and we are under legal obligations to collect certain information from you on behalf of government agencies. We manage actual or potential conflicts of interest in the public interest.
What happens if you do not provide personal data?
If you do not provide us with the information we ask for then we will not be able to meet our contractual obligations nor to effectively manage our employment relationship with you or protect the public interest.
Who do we share your information with?
We are legally obliged to share certain data with other public bodies such as HMRC, the Police and the Health and Safety Executive and will do so where the law requires this.
We will also generally comply with requests for specific information from other regulatory and law enforcement bodies where this is necessary and proportionate.
We will share information with external organisations in the following circumstances:-
- Depending upon the nature of your role, relevant information may be shared with relevant registered employment bodies such at the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) or General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS)
- Information gathered in respect of accidents at work and other safety incidents and assessments may be shared with the Health and Safety Executive and related bodies.
- Information relevant to your learning and development may be shared with educational institutions and assessment and awarding bodies.
- If you are an employee of the Dundee Health and Social Care Partnership we may share your data with authorised personnel within Tayside Health for the purposes of managing your employment relationship, to ensure that we meet our contractual obligations and to enable us to meet our wider legal duties as an employer.
- Your personal details may be shared with the Council’s insurance provider for the purposes of insurance policies held by the Council in respect of Employers Liability Insurance, Indemnification of employees and other insurance purposes as necessary.
- If at any time during or subsequent to your employment you exercise your rights to enter into a dispute via the courts system, including employment tribunal, we may be required to share information in relation to your employment relationship with the courts or legal representatives as required.
- If you are a member of the local government pension scheme, we will share information to ensure appropriate contributions and benefit calculations.
- Information may be shared with third parties in respect of processing payroll deduction made in respect of salary sacrifice contributions, charitable giving arrangements, payments made to satisfy court orders, AVC scheme contributions, trade union subscriptions, credit union contributions
- We will share information about your salary and employment record with financial institutions, but only where you have consented to this
- If you have an appointment with the Council’s current or previous occupational health adviser, we will give them personal information and you may have an occupational health record. Such records are retained by the current occupational health adviser. The contents of your medical records are confidential and are not disclosed to the Council but will inform any occupational health reports issued to the Council by its occupational health adviser.
- Where you use the Council’s physiotherapy or counselling services, relevant personal information will be shared with the provider to allow the service to be delivered.
- In the event that the Council changes its occupational health adviser, these records will transfer directly to the new adviser and will not pass through the Council.
- The Council is obliged to participate in the National Fraud Initiative in Scotland and in terms of this passes information on staff (primarily payroll data) to Audit Scotland for data matching to detect fraud or possible fraud. Details of this exercise can be found on Audit Scotland’s website
- The Council is subject to freedom of information (“FOISA”) legislation. Often we receive requests which seek disclosure of information about employees. Such requests are assessed carefully and we will only release staff information in response to FOISA requests if doing so is compatible with our legal obligations. As a general rule we will withhold the identities of employees, unless there are particular reasons to depart from this approach.
- Some officers may be required, as part of their duties, to attend or speak at council committees or sub-committees. If these meetings are webcast then images of the meeting (including the attendance or contribution of officers attending) will be published on the council’s website
- If you are the author of a committee report or named as the contact point in that report, your name, service and work telephone number will be published on the committee report on the council website
International Transfers
Information published on the Council’s website (including video footage of webcast meetings and committee reports) can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Otherwise your personal information will not be subject to international transfer.
How long do we keep your information?
We will retain your personal information only for as long as is necessary for the purposes for which we have collected it and in accordance with statutory requirements. The Council uses the Scottish Council records Retention Schedule, schedule 15 as the basis of its practice but keeps this under continuous review. For health and safety information it uses this schedule. Retention Schedule - Health & Safety
Your rights in relation to personal data
Access to your information – you have the right to access the information we hold on you. There are two ways to access your data:
Subject Access Request: you have the right to request a copy of the personal information that we hold about you.
Data Portability: you can ask us for a copy of your information so that you can re-use it and we will provide it in a machine-readable format. This is a qualified right, which means it only applies in certain circumstances and only relates to information you have given directly to us.
Correcting your information – we want to make sure that your personal information is accurate, complete and up to date. Therefore you may ask us to correct any personal information about you that you believe does not meet these standards.
Deleting of your information – you have the right to ask us to delete personal information about you where
- you think that we no longer need to hold the information for the purposes for which it was originally obtained
- you have a genuine objection to our use of your personal information – see Objecting to how we may use your information below
- our use of your personal information is contrary to law or our other legal obligations.
Restricting how we may use your information – in some cases, you may ask us to restrict how we use your personal information. This right might apply, for example, where we are checking the accuracy of personal information that we hold about you or we are assessing the objection you have made to our use of your information. This right might also apply if we no longer have a basis for using your personal information but you don't want us to delete the data. Where this right is realistically applied will mean that we may only use the relevant personal information with your consent, for legal claims or where there are other public interest grounds to do so.
Please contact the Council’s Data Protection Officer by post at this address, by email at: infogov@dundeecity.gov.uk and by telephone on 01382 434206. If you wish to exercise any of these rights.
Complaints:
We aim to directly resolve all complaints about how we handle personal information. However, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office, who can be contacted by post at: Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF. By phone on 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745. Visit their website for more information at - https://ico.org.uk/concerns
December 2018