Your personal information and what we do with it

As part of any recruitment process, the organisation collects and processes personal data relating to job applicants. The organisation is committed to being transparent about how it collects and uses that data and to meeting its data protection obligations.

This Privacy Policy is specific to applicants seeking employment with Market Harborough Building Society.

The meaning of some terms that we use in this privacy notice:

Profiling means any form of automated processing of your personal information to evaluate certain personal aspects about you, such as to analyse or predict aspects concerning your economic situation, health, personal preferences, interests, reliability, behaviour, location or movements.

Process or processing includes everything we do with your personal information from its collection, right through to its destruction or deletion when we no longer need it.  This includes for instance collecting it (from you), obtaining it (from other organisations), using, sharing, storing, retaining, deleting, destroying or transferring it overseas. 

Legitimate interests is mentioned in our privacy notice because data protection laws allow the processing of personal information where the purpose is legitimate and is not outweighed by your interests, fundamental rights and freedoms.  Those laws call this the legitimate interests legal ground for personal data processing.

Market Harborough Building Society of Welland House, 15-17 The Square, Market Harborough, Leicestershire, LE16 7PD is a data controller of your personal information.  This means information that is about you or from which we can identify you.  This privacy notice describes how we deal with your personal information.  We are the data controller of this information under relevant data protection laws because in the context of our business relationship with you we decide how and why it is processed in the ways explained in this privacy notice.  When we use terms such as we, us and our in this notice, we mean Market Harborough Building Society. 

Our Data Protection Officer (DPO) can be contacted at dpo@mhbs.co.uk or by calling 01858 412412 if you have queries about this privacy notice or wish to exercise any of the rights mentioned in it.

The organisation collects 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;
• information about your current level of remuneration, including benefit entitlements;
• whether you have a disability for which the organisation needs to make reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process;
• information about your entitlement to work in the UK;
• equal opportunities monitoring information, including information about your ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health, and religion or belief; and
• photos and CCTV recordings.

The organisation collects this information in a variety of ways. For example, data might be contained in application forms, CVs or resumes, obtained from your passport or other identity documents, or collected through interviews or other forms of assessment, including online tests.

The organisation will also collect personal data about you from third parties, such as Credit Reference Agencies.

Data will be stored in a range of different places, including on your application record, in HR management systems and on other IT systems (including email).

The organisation needs to process data to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract with you. It also needs to process your data to enter into a contract with you.

In some cases, the organisation needs to process data to ensure that it is complying with its legal obligations. For example, it is required to check a successful applicant’s eligibility to work in the UK before employment starts.

The organisation has a legitimate interest in processing personal data during the recruitment process and for keeping records of the process. Processing data from job applicants allows the organisation to manage the recruitment process, assess and confirm a candidate’s suitability for employment and decide to whom to offer a job. The organisation may also need to process data from job applicants to respond to and defend against legal claims.

Where the organisation relies on legitimate interests as a reason for processing data, it has considered whether those interests are overridden by the rights and freedoms of job applicants, employees or workers and has concluded that they are not.

The organisation processes health information if it needs to make reasonable adjustments to the recruitment process for candidates who have a disability. This is to carry out its obligations and exercise specific rights in relation to employment.

Where the organisation processes other special categories of data, such as information about ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health, religion or belief, age, gender or marital status, this is done for the purposes of equal opportunities monitoring with the explicit consent of job applicants, which can be withdrawn at any time by contacting DPO.

For some roles, the organisation is obliged to seek information about criminal convictions and offences. Where the organisation seeks this information, it does so because it is necessary for it to comply with a regulatory requirement to establish whether an individual has committed an unlawful act or been involved in dishonesty or other improper conduct/the purposes of preventing or detecting unlawful acts.

The organisation will not use your data for any purpose other than the recruitment exercise for which you have applied.

If your application is unsuccessful, the organisation will keep your personal data on file in case there are future employment opportunities for which you may be suited. The organisation will ask for your consent before it keeps your data for this purpose and you are free to withdraw your consent at any time by contacting DPO.

Your information will be shared internally for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. This includes members of the HR and recruitment team, interviewers involved in the recruitment process, managers in the business area with a vacancy and IT staff if access to the data is necessary for the performance of their roles.

The organisation will not share your data with third parties, unless your application for employment is successful and it makes you an offer of employment. The organisation will then share your data with Credit Reference Agencies to obtain the necessary background checks.

Your information may be transferred to and stored in locations outside the European Economic Area (EEA), including countries that may not have the same level of protection for personal information.

When we do this, we’ll ensure it has an appropriate level of protection and that the transfer is lawful. We may need to transfer your information in this way to carry out our contract with you, to fulfil a legal obligation and/or for our legitimate interests. In some countries the law might compel us to share certain information, e.g. with tax authorities. Even in these cases, we’ll only share your information with people who have the right to see it.

For more information about suitable safeguards and (as relevant) how to obtain a copy of them or to find out where they have been made available you can contact our Data Protection Officer using the details at the start of the document.

In order to process your application, we will perform credit and identity checks on you with one or more CRAs.  Background checking will include electoral roll, adverse credit i.e. CCJs, bankruptcy and directorships.

We will use this information to:

• verify the accuracy of the data you have provided to us; and
• prevent criminal activity, fraud and money laundering.

We will continue to exchange information about you with CRAs while you have a relationship with us.  When CRAs receive a search from us they may place a search footprint on your credit file that may be seen by other lenders.

The identities of the CRAs, their role also as fraud prevention agencies, the data they hold, the ways in which they use and share personal information, data retention periods and your data protection rights with the CRAs are explained in more detail at the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) link which we refer to later on in this privacy notice. 

You should tell us without delay so that we can update our records.  The contact details for this purpose are: Head of People , Market Harborough Building Society, Welland House, 15-17 The Square, Market Harborough, Leicestershire, LE16 7PD, telephone 01858 412651

We will use this information to:

• verify the accuracy of the data you have provided to us; and
• prevent criminal activity, fraud and money laundering.

We will continue to exchange information about you with CRAs while you have a relationship with us.  When CRAs receive a search from us they may place a search footprint on your credit file that may be seen by other lenders.

The identities of the CRAs, their role also as fraud prevention agencies, the data they hold, the ways in which they use and share personal information, data retention periods and your data protection rights with the CRAs are explained in more detail at the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) link which we refer to later on in this privacy notice. 

The organisation takes the security of your data seriously. It has 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.

Unless we explain otherwise to you, we will hold your personal information for the following periods:

Retention in case of queries. We will retain the personal information that we need to keep in case of queries from you (for instance, if you apply unsuccessfully for a vacancy, product or service) for 12 months unless we have to keep it for a longer period (see directly below);

Retention in case of claims. We will retain the personal information that we need to keep for the period in which you might legally bring claims against us which in practice means 15 years unless we have to keep it for a longer period (see directly below); and

Retention in accordance with legal and regulatory requirements. We will retain the personal information that we need to keep even after the relevant contract you have with us has come to an end to satisfy our legal and regulatory requirements.   

If you would like further information about our data retention practices, contact our Data Protection Officer. 

As a data subject, you have a number of rights. You can:

• access and obtain a copy of your data on request;
• require the organisation to change incorrect or incomplete data;
• require the organisation to delete or stop processing your data, for example where the data is no longer necessary for the purposes of processing;
• object to the processing of your data where the organisation is relying on its legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing; and
• ask the organisation to stop processing data for a period if data is inaccurate or there is a dispute about whether your interests override the organisation’s legitimate grounds for processing data.
• If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact DPO. You can make a subject access request by contacting Head of People.
• If you believe that the organisation has not complied with your data protection rights, you can complain to the Information Commissioner.

What if you do not provide personal data?

• You are under no statutory or contractual obligation to provide data to the organisation during the recruitment process. However, if you do not provide the information, the organisation may not be able to process your application properly or at all. If your application is successful, it will be a condition of any job offer that you provide evidence of your right to work in the UK and satisfactory references.
• You are under no obligation to provide information for equal opportunities monitoring purposes and there are no consequences for your application if you choose not to provide such information.

Recruitment processes are not based solely on automated decision-making.

Your personal information may be converted into statistical or aggregated data which cannot be used to re-identify you.  It may then be used to produce statistical research and reports. This aggregated data may be shared and used in all the ways described in this privacy notice.

This Policy will be reviewed annually and will be approved by the Head of People in conjunction with the Data Protection Officer (DPO).

Updated: July 2025