Privacy Information

At Wickes Building Supplies Limited we and our group companies are committed to protecting your personal information. Your personal information (also called ‘personal data’) is the information which identifies you as an individual that we get from you and others in various ways. Under the Data Protection Act 2018 (the "Act") specific obligations are placed on us in the way we handle this type of information. The aim of this privacy policy is to let you know what personal information we collect from you when you apply for a job with us or our group companies, when you use our website and when you contact us, how we store and use it, and how you can access and manage this information.

As you are applying for a job within the Wickes group of companies, it may be that your information needs to be passed to the relevant group company as part of the registration and application processes.

The registered office of Wickes is at Vision House, 19 Colonial Way, Watford, WD24 4JL. Our VAT number is 336725881.

Please note that this privacy policy only covers https://www.wickescareers.co.uk. Other areas of www.wickes.co.uk and other websites belonging to us or accessible via links are not covered by this policy. If you access any of these sites, please check the privacy policy applicable to these sites (if any) before you submit any of your personal information to them.

Where do we obtain your personal data from?

• From your CV directly by post or email
• From other files that you might attach to your application
• From online forms that you complete
• From files that upload to our Dropbox account
• From LinkedIn by giving permission for our service provider (currently Avature) to access your name, photo, headline and current positions and to use the primary email associated with your account
• From the ‘Send this job by email to a friend’ function on our website. If a visitor to the Wickes careers site sends a job advert to a friend we will collect their name and email address as well as friend’s name and email address
• From an agency or employment business (eg LinkedIn, Indeed)

What personal information do we collect?

• Name, address, phone number, email address
• Job preferences and areas of interest
• Right to work in the UK (British national or other right to work)
• Pay type (hourly/daily/annually), pay rate or salary
• Details of any pending prosecutions and unspent criminal convictions (you maybe asked to complete a DBS check)
• Worked or working in the military
• Work history: employer, position, start and end dates, duties
• Education and qualifications: school or university, qualification level, start and end dates
• Racial or ethnic origin
• Disabilities

We collect the personal information requested on our application forms and contact forms together with any comments or remarks that you may provide in free text fields (such as personal statements) or CVs (where applicable). We may also keep a record of references received from third parties (including those you give us, credit reference and fraud prevention agencies) and of any other correspondence or communication between you and us, whether written, e-mailed, or as a result of visits, interviews or recorded telephone calls.

We may also collect information from publicly available information sources such as social media websites and corporate directories so that we can contact you about potential opportunities which may be relevant to you.

We also monitor site traffic, and like most websites, we use a Unique Visitor Cookie (which is supplied and managed by a carefully selected statistics provider) to identify your PC by a random number (e.g. #12489). More details about cookies and how you can disable them can be found below.

We will attempt to contact you and let you know if there is a significant change to the way we process your personal data.

Making sure your personal data is secure

Whilst we take steps to protect user privacy, no data transmission over the internet can be entirely secure. We therefore do not guarantee the security of personal information that you send to us, or your use of the site. Any personal information you do send is at your own risk but once we receive it we use strict procedures to safeguard it.

In connection with a contract between you and us

We (and any Wickes group company) may use and process your personal information where it is necessary for us to do so in connection with or in anticipation of a contract between you and us (or Wickes group company):

• To process your job application and otherwise manage the recruitment process;
• Help us assess and process your job application;
• Help us check and confirm the references that you provide as part of your job application;
• Check with any necessary regulatory, industry and/or security authorities relevant to the position that you have applied for;
• To support the Armed Forces community by recruiting veterans, young and old;
• Conducting equal opportunities and diversity monitoring; and
• Contacting you about employment opportunities where your employment history, education and qualifications and salary expectations match our requirements

Our Legitimate Business Interest

We (and any Wickes group company) may use and process your personal information where it is necessary for us to pursue our legitimate interests as a business for the following purposes:

• Help us identify you so we know who we are talking to;
• Help prevent and detect fraud or loss;
• To contact you with information about opportunities that you might be interested in from time to time via phone or post;
• Assess risk, carry out market research, statistical analysis, test systems, improve the way that we run our recruitment process and Your application (including quality assurance) and analyse your application and recruitment history; and
• Train staff and monitor our services. This may mean that we record our conversations or our correspondence with you to make sure we are providing you with a good service and to make sure we keep to our legal and regulatory obligations.

Where you have provided consent

We and any Wickes group company may use your personal information where you have consented for us to do so:

• To provide you with job alerts.

This consent can be withdrawn by logging-in to your account on the website and updating your details.

Unless otherwise stated, we will hold data processed through contractual and legitimate interests indefinitely. Data processed via active consent will continue to receive marketing relative to the initial opt-in until we have received a request to unsubscribe/opt-out.

Retention periods

There are various scenarios in relation to how long your personal data is retained.

On completing your application you will be asked if you would like to opt in to the privacy policy and also register for future roles.

If you chose to Opt in;

• Your personal information will be entered into the Wickes recruitment database of candidates.
• You will receive a yearly email giving you the option to have your details removed.
• You have the right at any time to contact Wickes Recruitment Team and have your personal details removed.

If you chose to Opt out;

Who do we disclose your personal information to?

We may disclose your personal information to any member of our group, which means our subsidiary companies, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiary companies.

We may disclose your personal information to third parties:

In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets; If Wickes or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers will be one of the transferred assets; If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms and conditions to and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Wickes, our customers, or others.

We will not use your personal information to send you direct marketing, nor will we provide your personal information to third parties to use for their direct marketing purposes. These restrictions do not apply to contact or other personal data obtained in the context of a customer/supplier relationship or other non-employment relationship with us.

However, we may use external third party providers to perform certain services for us. These services / service providers may include but are not limited to:

• Avature, the company which currently provides the platform for our recruitment system, they store your information in the European Economic Area;
• Attrax who currently host our careers sites, they store your information in the European Economic Area;
• Service providers who help us with psychometric ability testing, video interviews, audit services, administrative services, IT technologies (e.g. data storage), security services and insurance claims;
• Background check providers who help us with reference checking, pre-employment checks, vetting services and verifying the information that you have provided if your application is successful;
• Service providers that assist us with listing our jobs, to reach people who may be interested in Wickes opportunities;
• Service providers that assist us in understanding how our websites works by setting cookies on our websites (more information on this can be found in our cookies policy https://wickescareers.co.uk/cookie-policy);
• Social media platforms who serve our job listings on their platforms;
• Service providers who send postal mail and emails and analyse data;
• Referees, so they can provide a reference
• These third parties have access to your personal information solely for the purposes of performing the services specified in the applicable service contract, and we require them to protect the personal information they handle and to keep it secure. We do not allow them to on-share your data without permission. We may be required to disclose your information to other third parties as required by law, regulatory requirement or court order, or to exercise or defend our legal rights to the extent authorised or permitted by law.

We may also disclose and/or transfer your personal information in connection with a reorganisation of all or part of our business, if the majority of our shares are bought by another company or if we transfer all or some of our assets to another company.

Transferring information to other countries

Some of the companies who provide services to us may be located outside the United Kingdom, eg Avature. Your personal data will be stored in the EEA.

How can you find out what personal information we hold about you?

Even if you don’t want a copy of your personal information, you can still contact us to check that the personal information that we hold is accurate or to let us know of any changes to your personal information. We always try to ensure that the information we hold is accurate, up to date and relevant and, as you are applying for a job with us, it is important that we have the right information in order to be able contact you. We'll be more than happy to make changes or to correct any inaccuracies.

You have the following rights when it comes to your data:

• to see the personal information that we hold about you at any time. (If you write to, email or phone us and ask to see this information, it is known as a ‘subject access request’ or ‘SAR’ for short);
• to object to any legitimate business interests processing;
• to withdraw consent (only in respect of any processing which depends on consent);
• to ask for your data to be updated or corrected (inaccuracies can be rectified);
• to contest any decision and ask for a human intervention if it is based on automated decision making.
• to ask Wickes to stop processing your data and exercise your right to be forgotten
• to make a data subject access request (as referenced above)
• to complain to the ICO if you believe Wickes has not acted legally in relation to your data.

You can do so by emailing us at GDPR@Wickes.co.uk inserting the words ‘Data Request’ in the heading.