At PIRC, accessible from publicinterest.org.uk, one of our main priorities is the privacy of our visitors. This page contains details of the types of information that is collected and recorded by PIRC and how we use it.
If you have additional questions or require more information about our Privacy Policy, do not hesitate to contact us.
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
Public Interest Research Centre Limited (PIRC) respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. PIRC is a personal data controller. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal data about you. This notice is aimed at informing you of how and why your personal data will be used, and how long it will be retained for. It provides you with certain information that must be provided under the General Data Protection Regulation ((EU) 2016/679) (GDPR) and the local data protection law.
Data Protection Principles
We will comply with data protection law and principles, which means that your data will 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.
- Maintained only for as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
- Kept securely and protected against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against loss or destruction using appropriate technical and organisational measures.
Using our Website
Log Files
Public Interest Research Centre follows a standard procedure of using log files. These files log visitors when they visit websites. All hosting companies do this and a part of hosting services’ analytics. The information collected by log files include internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, Internet Service Provider (ISP), date and time stamp, referring/exit pages, and possibly the number of clicks. These are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable. The purpose of the information is for analyzing trends, administering the site, tracking users’ movement on the website, and gathering demographic information.
Cookies and Web Beacons
Like any other website, Public Interest Research Centre uses “cookies”. These cookies are used to store information including visitors’ preferences, and the pages on the website that the visitor accessed or visited. The information is used to optimize the users’ experience by customizing our web page content based on visitors’ browser type and/or other information.
You can choose to disable cookies through your individual browser options. To know more detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers, it can be found at the browsers’ respective websites.
Children’s Information
Another part of our priority is adding protection for children while using the internet. We encourage parents and guardians to observe, participate in, and/or monitor and guide their online activity.
Public Interest Research Centre does not knowingly collect any Personal Identifiable Information from children under the age of 13. If you think that your child provided this kind of information on our website, we strongly encourage you to contact us immediately and we will do our best efforts to promptly remove such information from our records.
Consent
By using our website, you hereby consent to our Privacy Policy and agree to its terms.
Other data we may collect from time to time
e.g. via form or email for purposes of recruitment, working with us or joining a workshop or course.
The Kind Of Data We Hold About You
We amy collect, use and store the following categories of personal data about you:
- The data you have provided to us in any correspondence.
- The data you have provided on any application form, including name, pronoun, home address, telephone number, email address, work history, training, and other information you provide in support of your application.
- Any sensitive data you provide for our Equality & Diversity Monitoring Form.
- Any data you provide us during interviews.
- Any personal data provided to us about you by your referees.
How Is Your Personal Data Collected?
We collect personal data from the following sources:
- You.
- Any named referees, from whom we collect the following categories of data: full name, periods of previous employment, achievements in these roles.
- From publicly accessible sources where we may collect your full name, email, work history, and other data included on your profile.
How We Will Use Data About You
We will use the personal data we collect about you to:
- Assess your skills, qualifications, and suitability for the role / course etc.
- Carry out background and reference checks, where applicable.
- Communicate with you about the process.
- Keep records related to our processes.
- Comply with legal or regulatory requirements.
We may also need to process your personal data to decide whether to enter into a contract with you.
Having received your personal data, we will then process that data to decide whether you meet the basic requirements for the role / workshop / course etc.
If you do, we will decide whether your application is suitable to invite you for an interview (if applicable). If we decide to call you for an interview, we will use the data you provide to us at the interview to decide whether to offer you the role / place on the course. If we decide to make an offer, we may then take up references and/or any other check before confirming your appointment.
If you fail to provide personal data
If you fail to provide personal data when requested, which is necessary for us to consider your application, we may not be able to process your application further. For example, if we require references for a role and you fail to provide us with relevant details, we will not be able to take your application further.
How We Use Particularly Sensitive Personal Data
We will use your sensitive personal data only in so far as we are permitted by Law to do so:
- We will use data about your disability status to consider whether we need to provide appropriate adjustments during the recruitment process, for example whether adjustments need to be made during an interview or exercise.
- We will use data about your nationality, to assess whether a work permit and a visa will be necessary for the role.
- We will use aggregated and anonymised data from the form to monitor our own performance.
- We will use data relating to any protected characteristics that you may hold in our use of positive action.
Automated Decision-making
There is no automated decision making as part of any application process at PIRC.
Data Sharing
We may share your personal data with the third parties for the purposes of processing your application. Any third parties who may process your information are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal data in line with our policies.
We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions. Access to your information is time limited for the processing – and third parties retain no data once processing is complete.
Data Security
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need-to-know. They will only process your personal data on our specific instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.
Data Retention
If you are unsuccessful we shall retain your personal data for 6 months from the completion of the relevant process. We retain your personal data for that period so that we can show, in the event of a legal claim, that we have not discriminated against candidates on prohibited grounds and that we have conducted the recruitment exercise in a fair and transparent way. We may further retain such personal data in case a similar role becomes vacant for which you will be a fitting candidate with your express consent. After this period, we will securely destroy your personal data in accordance with our data retention policy.
Rights Of Access, Correction, Erasure, And Restriction
Your rights in connection with personal data
Under certain circumstances, by law 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 corrected.
- 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 exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
- 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. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes.
- Request the restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal data about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
- Request the transfer of your personal data to another party.
If you want to review, verify, correct, request erasure or object to the processing of your personal data, you can do so, by emailing info@publicinterest.org.uk
Data Protection Queries
We have appointed a Data Protection Officer [DPO] to oversee compliance with this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal data, please contact the DPO, Ant Jarrett, at .
You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk)
