At West HR, we’re committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

West HR is aware of its obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and is committed to processing your data securely and transparently. This privacy notice sets out, in line with GDPR, the types of data that we hold on you as a prospective client, client, employee of our client or supplier to the Company. It also sets out how we use that information, how long we keep it for and other relevant information about your data.

Data controller details

West HR is a data controller, meaning that it determines the processes to be used when using your personal data. Our contact details are as follows:

Sue West, Managing Director enquiries@westhr.co.uk

Data protection principles

In relation to your personal data, we will:

  • process it fairly, lawfully and in a clear, transparent way
  • collect your data only for reasons that we find proper for the course of our business relationship in ways that have been explained to you
  • only use it in the way that we have told you about
  • ensure it is correct and up to date
  • keep your data for only as long as we need it
  • process it in a way that ensures it will not be used for anything that you are not aware of or have consented to (as appropriate), lost or destroyed.

Types of data we process

We hold many types of data about you, including:

  • your personal details including your name, address, email address, phone numbers
  • our contracts, correspondence and transaction history as a user or supplier
  • bank details
  • letters, contracts, meeting minutes and other documentation relating to employment advice and support we provide to our clients
  • lists of delegates for training events

How we collect your data

We may use your information to:

We collect data about you in a variety of ways and this will usually start when we begin a business relationship with you where we will collect the data from you directly. This includes contact details and bank details. Later we may collect details from clients about specific work projects that we support you with.

In addition, data about you may be obtained from other work place sources (such our contract that you agree to, Company systems and correspondence) during the course of your employment.

Personal data is kept in hard copy files, email correspondence or within our IT systems.

Why we process your data

The law on data protection allows us to process your data for certain reasons only:

  • where we have your consent
  • in order to perform the contract that we are party to
  • in order to carry out legally required duties
  • in order for us to carry out our legitimate interests
  • to protect your interests and
  • where something is done in the public interest.

All of the processing carried out by us falls into one of the permitted reasons. Generally, we will rely on performing our contractual obligations to process your data. Examples include:

  • entering into a contract with you
  • ensuring suppliers are paid and
  • delivering our service to our clients.

We also need to collect your data to ensure we are complying with legal requirements such as:

  • keeping records for Companies House reporting and HMRC.

We also collect data so that we can carry out activities which are in the legitimate interests of the Company. We have set these out below:

  • keeping clients and prospective clients informed about changes in employment regulation and good practice along with services we offer
  • achieving legal compliance and dealing with legal claims made against us
  • ensuring effective general HR and business administration.

If you have signed up to our newsletter via our website, you have explicitly consented to us processing your data for this purpose.

Special categories of data

Special categories of data are data relating to your:

  • health
  • sex life
  • sexual orientation
  • race
  • ethnic origin
  • political opinion
  • religion
  • trade union membership
  • genetic and biometric data.

We must process special categories of data in accordance with more stringent guidelines. Most commonly, we will process special categories of data when the following applies:

  • you have given explicit consent to the processing
  • we must process the data in order to carry out our legal obligations
  • we must process data for reasons of substantial public interest
  • you have already made the data public.

We will use your special category data:

  • as required in client workforce matters where relevant.

We do not need your consent if we use special categories of personal data in order to carry out our legal obligations or exercise specific rights under employment law. However, we may ask for your consent to allow us to process certain particularly sensitive data. If this occurs, you will be made fully aware of the reasons for the processing. As with all cases of seeking consent from you, you will have full control over your decision to give or withhold consent and there will be no consequences where consent is withheld. Consent, once given, may be withdrawn at any time. There will be no consequences where consent is withdrawn.

If you do not provide your data to us

One of the reasons for processing your data is to allow us to carry out our duties in line with our contract with you. If you do not provide us with the data needed to do this, we will unable to perform those duties eg providing advice, ensuring suppliers are paid correctly.

Sharing your data

We share your data with third parties in order to obtain further specialist advice and services such as accountancy or legal services. We also use a third party marketing company for our email newsletters.

We do not share your data with bodies outside of the European Economic Area.

Protecting your data

We are aware of the requirement to ensure your data is protected against accidental loss or disclosure, destruction and abuse. We have implemented processes to guard against such. eg backing up our servers, firewalls, access control for personal information, using password protected documents and encryption when transferring sensitive data, ensuring our IT systems that process personal information are secure to GDPR standards.

Where we share your data with third parties, we provide written instructions to them to ensure that your data are held securely and in line with GDPR requirements. Third parties must implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security of your data.

How long we keep your data for

In line with data protection principles, we only keep your data for as long as we need it for, which will be at least for the duration of our business relationship and for six years after our contract/s has ended for HMRC record keeping and the defence of potential legal claims.

Automated decision making

No decision will be made about you solely on the basis of automated decision making (where a decision is taken about you using an electronic system without human involvement) which has a significant impact on you.

Your rights in relation to your data

The law on data protection gives you certain rights in relation to the data we hold on you. These are:

  • the right to be informed. This means that we must tell you how we use your data, and this is the purpose of this privacy noticethe right of access. You have the right to access the data that we hold on you. To do so, you should make a subject access request
  • the right for any inaccuracies to be corrected. If any data that we hold about you is incomplete or inaccurate, you are able to require us to correct it
  • the right to have information deleted. If you would like us to stop processing your data, you have the right to ask us to delete it from our systems where you believe there is no reason for us to continue processing it
  • the right to restrict the processing of the data. For example, if you believe the data we hold is incorrect, we will stop processing the data (whilst still holding it) until we have ensured that the data is correct
  • the right to portability. You may transfer the data that we hold on you for your own purposes
  • the right to object to the inclusion of any information.
    You have the right to object to the way we use your data where we are using it for our legitimate interests
    the right to regulate any automated decision-making and profiling of personal data. You have a right not to be subject to automated decision making in way that adversely affects your legal rights.

Where you have provided consent to our use of your data, you also have the unrestricted right to withdraw that consent at any time. Withdrawing your consent means that we will stop processing the data that you had previously given us consent to use. There will be no consequences for withdrawing your consent. However, in some cases, we may continue to use the data where so permitted by having a legitimate reason for doing so.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights explained above, please contact the Data Controller listed above.

Making a complaint

The supervisory authority in the UK for data protection matters is the Information Commissioner (ICO). If you think your data protection rights have been breached in any way by us, you are able to make a complaint to the ICO.