The Health & Safety Dept Group Privacy Notice 

In compliance with data protection regulations, this privacy policy explains what personal information we collect from you when you visit our website, interact with us or use our services.

We are committed to processing personal information in ways that comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, and to being clear with you about what we do with your personal information.

We are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy and we do not share personal information with other companies for marketing purposes.

The Health & Safety Dept Ltd is part of a group company called The HR Dept Group Ltd.

The Health & Safety Dept operates as a franchise, which means that Health & Safety Dept offices around the UK and Ireland are individual registered companies operating under licence to use Health & Safety Dept brand and resources. We refer to this as The Health & Safety Dept.

In this Privacy Policy, whenever you see the words ‘we’, ‘us’, ‘our’ it refers to The Health & Safety Dept.

How can you contact our team?

Telephone: 0345 208 1120

Email: dataprotection@hsdept.co.uk

Post: The Health & Safety Dept Ltd, First Floor, 3 Brook Office Park, Emersons Green, Bristol, BS16 7FL

If you are a Health & Safety Dept customer or Licensee, are an organisation that receives health and safety support from us, if you use or supply us with products or services, enquire about our services, take part in our market research activities, interact with us online, email, live chat, call or write to us, or just visit our website, this Privacy Policy applies to you.

Due to the nature of our business, sometimes we may act as a data controller, sometimes we act as a data processor.

Where we act as the ‘data controller’ of your personal data, this means we determine how and why your personal data is processed and this privacy notice will apply to you.

Where we act as the ‘data processor’ of your personal data (for example, if your employer uses the services of The Health & Safety Dept) this means we are acting on their behalf and processing your personal data under their instructions, and we would recommend you review their data privacy information; it is likely that they are the data controller and will be best placed to help.

If you are an employee of The Health & Safety Dept current team customer, job applicant or previous team customer we have created specific policies for you, and they will have been made available to you at the appropriate point in time.

We are registered as a data controller at the UK Information Commissioner’s Office under number Z9156222.

In line with the expectations of the Data Protection Act (2018) and the GDPR regulations, we only collect necessary information that is required to allow us to promote and deliver our services fairly and effectively.

The Health & Safety Dept may collect and process information about you from several sources or processes which are outlined here:

• When you use our website or subscribe to our newsletter.
• When information is received through networking activity by a staff member of any business in The Health & Safety Dept about yourself or your company, and where it is understood there is a legitimate interest in you receiving health and safety services from The Health & Safety Dept. The data controller would be the business within The Health & Safety Dept you provided the information to, and The Health & Safety Dept Ltd is a sub-processor.
• When your company or employing company enters into a client agreement with a business in The Health & Safety Dept and provides information about you to that Health & Safety Dept business for the purposes of receiving health and safety services. In this case, only information about you that is relevant to the delivery of these services should be shared by your employer with The Health & Safety Dept. The data controller for this information is your company or employing company. The business within The Health & Safety Dept you provided the information to, and The Health & Safety Dept Ltd, are sub-processors.
• When you submit personal information, a CV or other application information to an Health & Safety Dept office for the purposes of recruitment, that Health & Safety Dept office’s registered limited company is the data controller. That Health & Safety Dept office will process your information in accordance with the purpose for which it was submitted only. For the purposes of recruitment on behalf of one of its clients, that Health & Safety Dept office will share with its recruiting client only the appropriate data necessary for the purposes of undertaking the recruitment application for which you submitted your data. From time to time, Health & Safety Dept offices may use recruitment companies or similar third parties to support them with recruitment activity. In such circumstances, the data privacy notice for the third-party recruitment company will be available through their own website.

We collect and process your data for different reasons in different circumstances, but we’ll only collect and process your data where we have a legal basis for doing so. Our purposes and legal basis for using each type of data are set out below.

Personal information is provided to us in a number of ways and depends on your relationship with us. Personal data may be provided to us by our corporate clients who subscribe to our services, or it may be provided to us directly, for example if you are a Health & Safety Dept Licensee.

A small amount may also come from publicly available sources: e.g., Companies House, company websites etc.

We then process it for one of the following reasons:

• To manage our relationship with you
• To respond to your enquiries
• To manage the services we provide to you
• To take pre-contractual and contractual steps with you
• To comply with our legal obligations as a business

Here are some further examples of how we use your personal data:

• To analyse website usage so we can determine how we can make improvements and if you subscribe to our newsletter, to email you about other directly related products and services we think may be of interest to you based on our understanding of your legitimate interest.
• To personalise your repeat visits to our website. If you submit your information on a contact form with interest in accessing health and safety services through The Health & Safety Dept, we will pass on your information to a franchise business operating under license from The Health & Safety Dept Ltd that is located closest to you or can appropriately service you, so that they may offer you their products and services.
• To survey contacts about activity directly related to Health & Safety Dept marketing activity, service delivery or directly related projects undertaken by The Health & Safety Dept Ltd.
• To provide outsourced health and safety services to your company or employing company in line with client agreements made with the company.
• To provide recruitment services to its client companies for which you have submitted your data for the purposes of/in relation to an application for employment.

If you provide your information to us through this website, we consider this to mean you have a legitimate interest in our services, that you are happy to be contacted in relation to those services, and that you are happy for us to share this with our relevant data sub-processors outlined below in order for our services to be delivered to you.

We may anonymise and aggregate any of the personal data we hold (so that you can no longer be identified by it).

We may use anonymised and aggregated information for purposes that include testing our IT systems, research, data analysis, improving our site, apps and developing new products and services.

Sometimes we might share your data with third parties. This could include:

• Service providers we use for specific purposes, such as for our IT systems.
• Regulatory authorities, law enforcement agencies and courts.
• In the event of a sale of all or a part of our business, the buyer and its professional advisers.

Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the lawful bases we rely on for processing this information are:

• Your consent. Where consent has been given, you are able to remove your consent at any time. You can do this by contacting us
• We have a contractual obligation
• We have a legal obligation
• We have a vital interest
• We have a legitimate interest

For our general day-to-day data processing activities, we use third party organisations to help us administer and monitor the services we provide:

• For the provision of IT and software services to enable the management of our customers, staff and office administration.
• For financial accounting.
• To share newsletters, promotional detail, industry news or other information that may be of interest to you.
• To help us improve our services.
• For the administration of our website and customer interactions.
• For any legal guidance in the provision of our services.

Access to your personal information is only allowed when required by the law or is required as part our fulfilling our service obligations.  We do not, and will never, sell your personal information to other third parties.

We are committed to keeping personal information secure to protect it from being inappropriately or accidentally accessed, used, shared or destroyed, and against it being lost. We endeavour to ensure that our suppliers take similar steps to keep your data secure. We take organisational measures to keep information secure and provide regular training for staff on data protection.

However, we understand that even the best laid plans can sometimes go wrong, and therefore we have developed and rehearsed a breach management process. In the unlikely event that we, or one of our partners or suppliers, accidentally compromise the confidentiality, integrity or availability of your data, then we will endeavour, where required, to notify you, and other relevant parties such as the ICO, within 72 hours of becoming aware of the incident. We will do this by informing you via the contact details that we have recorded for you.

We will only store your personal data for as long as is necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy or for as long as we reasonably consider necessary to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights.

This means that your data will be retained in line with statutory and regulatory requirements. For example, we retain details on services and products delivered for a minimum period of 6 years post the end of the transaction.

The Health & Safety Dept must retain some information for periods in line with regulatory or legislative requirements. If there is no regulatory or legal requirement to retain your information, the criteria used to determine these retention periods includes:

• To comply with the minimum regulatory retention requirements as set in law.
• To comply with the statutory retention periods for accounting records, as set by the Companies Act and HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC).

Where our retention periods are not governed by legislation, our retention policy is based on commercial justifications, which have been set in accordance with the principle of retaining personal data for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which it is processed. These include:

• To enable us to provide you with our products and services.
• To allow us to resolve any disputes or complaints.
• For the detection and prevention of fraud.

Your right of access – You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.

Some or all of the personal data may be exempt from such requests in a particular circumstance. If an exemption applies, we will tell you this when responding to your request. Should you wish to exercise this right, please contact us with a description of the information you would like to see.

Your right to erasure – You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances. The right to erase your personal data can be made on the following grounds:

• Your personal data is no longer necessary in relation to the purpose for which it was collected or processed.
• If the processing is based on consent, you choose to withdraw your consent and there is no other legal ground for processing.
• You object to processing, and there are no overriding legitimate grounds to continue the processing.
• Your personal data has been processed unlawfully.
• Your personal data must be erased for compliance with a legal obligation.

Our contact details

Registered Office:

The Health & Safety Dept Ltd, First Floor, 3 Brook Office Park, Emersons Green, Bristol, BS16 7FL

Tel: 0345 208 1120

Email: dataprotection@hsdept.co.uk

Company number: 04479417

If you have any concerns about our use of your personal information, you can make a complaint to us using the contact details above. We would ask that if you do wish to do this that you please tell us first so that we have a chance to address your concerns.

If you are not satisfied with our response or you are unhappy with how we have used your data, you can also complain to the ICO.

The ICO’s address: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

ICO website: https://www.ico.org.uk