Morr & Co Solicitors

Candidate Privacy Notice

Data controller: Morrisons Core Services Ltd or Morr & Co LLP.  This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you.

As part of any recruitment process, we collect and process personal data relating to job applicants. We are committed to being transparent about how we collect and use that data and to meeting our data protection obligations.

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.
  • Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
  • Kept securely.

The kind of information we hold about you

What information do we collect?

We collect, store and use a range of information about you. This includes:

  • your name, address and contact details, including email address and telephone number;
  • details of your qualifications, skills, experience and employment history;
  • additional information provided by you or the recruitment agent contained in your CV or covering letter;
  • information from the SRA and any other professional bodies;
  • information from social media sources
  • information about your current level of remuneration, including benefit entitlements;
  • whether or not you have a disability for which we need to make reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process;
  • information about your entitlement to work in the UK;
  • Information you provide during the interview process;
  • Interview and interview test results.

We may also collect, store and use the following types of more sensitive personal information:

  • Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and political opinions.
  • Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records.
  • Information about criminal convictions and offences.

We may collect this information in a variety of ways. For example, data might be obtained from you, or a recruitment agent, contained in application forms, CVs or covering letters, obtained from your passport or other identity documents, collected through interviews or other forms of assessment, obtained through social media or professional bodies.

We may seek information from previous employers only once a job offer to you has been made and will inform you that we are doing so.

How we will use the Personal Data?

We will use the personal information we collect about you to:

  • Assess your skills, qualifications and suitability for a role.
  • Carry out background and reference checks, where applicable.
  • Communicate with you about the recruitment process.
  • Keep records related to our recruitment process.
  • Comply with legal or regulatory requirements.

It is in our legitimate interests to decide whether to appoint you to a role, since it would be beneficial to our business to appoint someone to the role.  We also need to process your personal information to decide whether to enter into a contract of employment with you.

Having received your CV and covering letter or your application documents and the results of any tests that we may ask you to complete, we will then process that information to decide whether to proceed to a telephone / video conference interview, or full face to face interview. If we decide to call you for an interview, we will use the information you provide to us at the interview to decide whether to offer you work. If we decide to offer you the work, we will then take up references and check with your professional body (where applicable) before confirming your appointment.

We will use your sensitive personal information in the following ways:

  • We will use information about your disability status to consider whether we need to provide appropriate adjustments during the recruitment process, for example whether adjustment need to be made during a test or interview.
  • We will use information about your race or national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, or your sexual life or sexual orientation, to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting.
  • We will use information about any criminal convictions to assess your suitability for a particular role as some roles within the firm require a high degree of trust and integrity.

If you fail to provide personal information

If you fail to provide information when requested, which is necessary for us to consider your application (such as evidence of qualifications or work history), we will not be able to process your application successfully. For example, if we require a credit check or references for this role and you fail to provide us with relevant details, we will not be able to take your application further.

Automated decision-making

You will not be subject to decisions that will have a significant impact on you based solely on automated decision-making.

Why might you share your personal information with third parties?

Your information may be shared internally for the purposes of the recruitment exercise.

We will not share your data with third parties, unless your application for employment is successful and we make you an offer of employment. We will then share your data with former employers to obtain references for you. We will not transfer your data outside the European Economic Area.

How do we protect your data?

We take the security of your data seriously. We have internal policies and controls in place to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by our employees in the proper performance of their duties.

How long do we keep your data?

If your application for employment is unsuccessful, we will hold your data on file for one year after the end of the relevant recruitment process.   After that period of time if you have attended an interview we will keep your name, the date of the interview and the outcome of the interview.  This will be kept for a period of 3 years.  We retain your personal information 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.

If your application for employment is successful, personal data gathered during the recruitment process will be transferred to your employee file and retained during your employment. The periods for which your data will be held will be provided to you in a new privacy notice.

Your rights

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

  • Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a "data subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
  • Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
  • Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information 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 information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
  • Object to processing of your personal information 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 information for direct marketing purposes.
  • Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
  • Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact [email protected].  If you believe that we have not complied with your data protection rights, you can complain to the Information Commissioner.