Terms & Conditions

As part of our application and recruitment process for roles candidates have applied for via https://jobs.nhsbt.nhs.uk, NHS Blood & Transplant (NHSBT) collects, processes, and stores personal information about you. This notice describes how NHSBT handles and protects the data which you provide to us in connection with the recruiting process. This data is held securely and is processed in line with the requirements of Data Protection Legislation, including but not limited to ensuring only the information required to fulfil the purpose is shared.

1. What personal information do we collect and process?

  • Personal details such as name, postal address.
  • Information to enable us to contact you, such as telephone number and email address.
  • If you choose to share it with us, we will capture your date of birth, nationality, and gender.
  • Information to identify you such as your National Insurance number, passport, driving licence.
  • Information about your skills and experience such as work history, qualifications, training.
  • Information about your suitability to work for us, such as references, interview notes, criminal record, assessment results, occupational health screening results.
  • Information about your terms of employment such as salary, job title, location, and hours.
  • Feedback on your overall experience through the recruitment process. This data is captured confidentially and anonymously if you wish.

2. Why do we need to collect and process your personal data?

The purpose of the data capture and processing is primarily to enable you to register for our job alerts or to apply for a job vacancy at NHSBT, have your suitability assessed for the role and ensure that all the necessary information is obtained for an offer of employment, where applicable, and onboarding to be progressed without delay. This includes:

  • Administering your application;
  • Assessing your skills, qualifications and interests against our job opportunities;
  • Verifying your information and carrying out pre-employment checks including reference checks, occupational health screening and conducting criminal record (DBS) checks, following a conditional offer of employment that you have accepted;
  • Communications with you about the recruitment process and/or your application(s), including informing you of other potential career opportunities (if you do not wish us to do this, please contact us at recruitmentteam@nhsbt.nhs.uk);
  • Where requested by you and following your acceptance of a conditional offer of employment, assisting you with obtaining an immigration visa or work permit where required.
  • In the legitimate interests of NHSBT such as making improvements to our advertising approaches, application and/or recruitment process including improving diversity in recruitment practices; and/or
  • Complying with applicable laws, regulations, legal processes, or enforceable governmental requests.
  • We utilise various candidate assessment methods across the Organisation and at times work with an external company to supply these.
  • If you are offered and accept employment with NHSBT, some of the information collected during the application and recruitment process will become part of your employment record, including individual demographic information for equal opportunities monitoring purposes and to enable rights and obligations to be identified (including ethnic origin, age, gender etc.)

3. Screening Checks

As part of pre-employment checking, NHSBT performs screening checks to check suitability for roles, where permitted by law. These checks may include disclosure and barring service (DBS) checks and occupational health screening. Should you be made a conditional offer of employment, this will be subject to satisfactory clearances. The applicable checks will be indicated in the offer and will only proceed if you accept.

4. Who has access to your data?

Your personal information may be shared internally and externally, with the people below, to enable the recruitment process to take place. The information shared is limited to what is required by an individual to perform their role in the recruitment process. We may need to share your information with parties internally including:

  • Employees who have responsibility for assessing suitability for the vacancy either during the application, assessment or pre-employment checking stages and for ensuring your successful onboarding;
  • Employees who have responsibility for recruitment processes (for example attraction, assessment, pre-employment screening) or for administering recruitment and onboarding processes;
  • Employees in Legal, HR, and Fraud with responsibility for investigating issues of non-compliance with laws and regulations, policies and contractual requirements;
  • Employees in IT and system owners who manage user access;
  • Security managers for facilities/premises.

    • We also may also need to share your information confidentially with external third parties including:

  • Your previous employers and/or academic institutions in seeking references and in validating information that you’ve provided;
  • Companies who provide candidate assessment tools and applicant tracking services to NHSBT (our current Applicant Tracking System is provided by JobTrain);
  • Suppliers who undertake background screening on behalf of NHSBT (e.g. criminal record checking agencies, occupational health screening); and
  • Other third-party suppliers, who provide services on our behalf.
  • NHSBT’s professional advisers.
  • Other statutory law enforcement agencies or regulatory bodies to assist in investigation of any legal or fraudulent activity or professional misconduct.

5. How is your data protected?

We take the security of your data very seriously. We have internal policies and controls (for example restricting electronic access rights to information systems based on an employee’s role) in place to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused, or accidentally disclosed, and is not accessed by our employees except in the performance of their duties.

Where we use 3rd parties to process personal data on our behalf, they commit contractually , as a minimum, to provide the same level of protection as provided by NHSBT. Your personal data will be retained by us in accordance with our retention schedule for candidate records. This means that we will retain some data after your application to NHSBT is complete.

Our retention periods are included in Schedule 2. However, we will provide you with the opportunity to request that we retain your job application on JobTrain (our Applicant Tracking System) for a longer period to save you time with future job applications as well as your job alert registration.

If you take up employment with NHSBT the personal data which we have collected about you in the recruitment process will be managed in accordance with our privacy notice for employees.

You can contact our Data Protection Officer for questions on data protection and you can also contact the Information Commissioner (see contact details below).

6. Your Rights

In certain circumstances you have the right;

  • To be informed about how your data is used (this is detailed in this notice)
  • To receive a copy of the information we hold about you (please contact sar@nhsbt.nhs.uk)
  • To update or amend the information we hold about you if it is wrong
  • To change your communication or marketing preferences at any time
  • To erasure (also called the right to be forgotten). Applications to apply this right will be considered by NHSBT on a case by case basis due to our obligations under employment law
  • To restrict how your data is processed
  • To raise a concern or complaint about the way in which your information is being used

If you have any queries about this notice or how your personal information is used generally you should contact recruitmentteam@nhsbt.nhs.ukin the first instance. You can also obtain more information or ask specific questions about your data by contacting the Data Protection Officer at DataPrivacyTeam@nhsbt.nhs.uk

It is your responsibility to notify us of any changes to your personal information so that accurate application records can be maintained. You can manage all your applicant data by accessing and updating your profile in the applicant tracking system used by NHSBT. If you have a complaint regarding the way in which your data has been handled, if you believe it is inaccurate, held for too long or it is not secure you can contact our Data Protection Officer.

The Data Protection Officer

Under Data Protection Legislation all NHS organisations are legally required to appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO). NHSBT’s DPO is Eleanor Ward, Head of Data Security, Privacy and Records Management, who is responsible for ensuring that all practices and processes within NHSBT are designed to support people’s privacy and data rights and making sure data protection is represented at board level. You can contact the Data Protection Officer if you have any questions or concerns about your privacy rights within NHSBT via: DataPrivacyTeam@nhsbt.nhs.uk

The Information Commissioners Office (ICO)The ICO are the UK’s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest and promote openness in public bodies and data privacy for individuals. The ICO provide free and independent advice to citizens on their privacy rights. You can contact the ICO for advice or log a complaint via: Website: www.ico.org.uk Helpline :0303 123 1113 (local rate – calls to this number cost the same as calls to 01 or 02 numbers). If you're calling from outside the UK, you may not be able to use the 03 number, so please call +44 1625 545 700. Welsh speaking service: 029 2067 8400. Rydym yn croesawu galwadau yn Gymraeg ar 029 2067 8400. Normal opening hours are Monday to Friday between 9am and 5pm. Post: Information Commissioner's Office Wycliffe House Water Lane Wilmslow Cheshire SK9 5AF.

7. Changes to this Notice

We may make changes to this notice from time to time. We will post any changes on this page and the version of the notice is identified at the top of the page by its effective date.

Schedule 1: Information we may process

  • Name and address
  • Contact telephone number(s) and email address
  • Date of birth and national insurance number
  • Work history, employer name and address, job title, years worked and reason for leaving
  • Education, results, educational establishment, and year
  • Professional training and awards, awarding establishments, results and year
  • Previous salary and expectations
  • Physical/mental health and condition(s) requiring adaptations to the work environment
  • Relations and/or relationships with NHSBT employee(s), whom and type of relationship
  • Where an applicant has heard about a vacancy to enable advertising success to be identified
  • Criminal convictions and details
  • Referee details, job title, employer, and relationship
  • Gaps in employment, dates, and a reason
  • Whether an applicant is a current NHSBT member of staff at risk of redundancy
  • Individual demographic information in compliance with legal requirements (such as national insurance number, passport/visa information, nationality, citizenship, work permit, disability, and gender)
  • Individual demographic information for equal opportunities monitoring purposes and to enable rights and obligations to be identified (including ethnic origin, age, gender etc.)
  • Employment contract related information (including job title, salary, location, hours of work, reporting relationship etc.)
  • Bank account details for salary payment purposes
  • Reference details such as disciplinary record
  • Interview and assessment results, reports, and notes
  • Photograph/image from video interviewing technology
  • Building CCTV images

Schedule 2: Information we may process

The categories of recruitment data that we process and the period that we retain them for are described below. Should it be necessary to retain data for a longer period, for example due to ongoing litigation, this will be disclosed.

Interview notes: A minimum of 12 months and no longer than 24 months

Printed application: Destroyed the day after interview or as soon as no longer required (whichever is earlier)

Applicant Tracking System (ATS) candidate record / application which may include the information included in Schedule 1:12 months from last log on by candidate.

Management Information (MI) reports which include specific candidate data such as name: 6 months from date of creation.