Privacy Policy

We take our responsibility of protecting your privacy very seriously. We protect any personal information you give us while you are using our website. This privacy policy tells you what to expect when we collect personal information from visitors to our website.

Important information about us:

We are Ongo Recruitment Limited, a company registered in England and Wales (Company No. 04750128).  We are part of the Ongo Group and our registered office is at Ongo House, High Street, Scunthorpe, England, DN15 6AT. We are listed on the Information Commissioner’s register of data controllers under number: Z8802772.

What is the purpose of this policy?

This privacy policy aims to give you information on how Ongo Recruitment collects and processes your personal information as one of our customers, candidates or through your use of this website.  It makes you aware of how and why your personal information will be used, namely for the purposes of recruitment, and how long it will usually be retained for. It provides you with certain information that must be provided under the retained EU law version of the General Data Protection Regulation ((EU) 2016/679) (‘UK GDPR’).

This policy primarily covers how we use information relating to our customers, candidates, prospects, website visitors and people who interact with or do business with us (such as our suppliers).  In these cases, we will be the “data controller” for the purposes of data protection law. 

It is important that you read this policy, together with any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information.

We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact the DPO using the details set out in the “Contact Us” section below.

Data protection principles

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 types of personal information we collect and store:

If you make an application for work with us through our recruitment service, communicate with us, or do business with us, this will result in us collecting personal data about you. We will collect, store, and use the following types of personal information about you:

  • Contact details such as the name, address, email, fax and telephone numbers of business and candidate contacts.
  • Bank and transaction details such as details about payments to and from you and other details of products and services you have purchased from us.
  • Technical information such as includes IP address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
  • Information you provide to us during the registration process including employment history, right to work documentation and qualifications.
  • Information about how you use our website, products and services.
  • Any information you provide to us during the course of an interview.
  • CCTV footage in the event you appear on CCTV installed at our premises.

How is your personal information collected?

We collect your personal information through different methods including:

  • Direct interactions with you by telephone, e-mail, phone or otherwise.
  • Through the service we provide to you.
  • Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we may automatically collect technical information about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies.
  • Your named referees.
  • Information from publicly available sources such as your social media profiles.

How we will use your personal information:

We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

  • Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
  • Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
  • Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

Generally, we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal information other than in relation to sending third party direct marketing communications to you via email or text message. You have the right to withdraw consent to such marketing at any time.

Purposes for which we use your personal information:

We need all the categories of information in the list above (see The type of information we collect about you above) primarily to allow us to perform our contract with you and to enable us to comply with our legal obligations. In some cases, we may use your personal information to pursue legitimate interests of our own or those of third parties, provided your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. The situations in which we will process your personal information are listed below:

  • To register you as a customer.
  • To assess the skills, qualifications and suitability for work of candidates for work with our customers.
  • To manage our relationship with you, including notifying your about changes to our contract or services or asking you to provide us with feedback.
  • To administer and protect the business and this website.
  • To make suggestions or recommendations to you about similar goods or services that may be of interest to you.
  • To use data analytics to improve our website, products/services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences.
  • To keep records relating to any hiring of placement processes.

If you fail to provide personal information:

If you fail to provide certain information when requested either by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you and you fail to provide that information when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with goods or services). 

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

Sharing your personal information

Where necessary or required, we may share your personal information as follows:

  • With third party service providers, in connection with services performed on our behalf.  For example, our email provider, our IT provider, our platform provider and analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our website
  • With other members of the Ongo Group.
  • With government bodies, our regulators and law enforcement agencies.
  • With our insurers and professional advisers.
  • With third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy policy.

This list is not exhaustive as there are other circumstances where we may also be required to share information, for example:

  • To meet our legal obligations.
  • In connection with legal proceedings (or where we are instructed to do so by Court order).

All our third-party service providers are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

Storing your personal information:

The personal information that we collect is stored within the UK and European Economic Area (EEA). However, there may be some circumstances where it is necessary to transfer and store personal information at a destination outside the UK or the EEA.  In these circumstances, we will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that personal information is treated securely and in accordance with data protection law and, in the event that personal information is transferred outside the UK or the EEA, shall ensure that this is carried out subject to the requirements of the retained the UK GDPR.

How long do we keep your personal information for?

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

Details of retention periods for different aspects of your personal information are available in our Data Retention policy which you can request from us by contacting us.

Your right to access personal information:

You can find out if we hold any personal information about you by making a ‘subject access request’ under the  UK GDPR. If we do hold information about you, we will:

  • Give you a description of it;
  • Tell you why we are holding;
  • Tell you who it has been disclosed to; and
  • Let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.

You may also have the right for your personal information to be transmitted electronically to another organisation in certain circumstances.  You can request access to the information we hold about you at any time by contacting us (please see contact details section below). Please mark your request for the attention of our Data Protection Officer. If you are seeking to obtain specific information (e.g. about a particular matter of from a particular time period), it helps if you clarify the details of what you would like to receive in your request. If someone is requesting information on your behalf, they will need written confirmation from you to evidence your consent for us to release this and proof of ID (both yours and theirs). We have one month to provide you with the information you’ve asked for (although we will try to provide this to you as promptly as possible.

Your rights:

If you believe that any of the personal information we hold about you is incorrect, you have the right to ask us to rectify that information at any time.

You may also have the right, in certain circumstances, to request that we delete your personal information, to block any further processing of your personal information or to object to the processing of your personal information. There are some specific circumstances where these rights do not apply and we can refuse to deal with your request.

If we are processing your personal information based upon your consent (e.g. as part of our marketing or promotional activities or to make a voluntary referral to an external agency), you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.

If you require any further information about your right to rectification, erasure, restriction of or object to processing or you wish to withdraw your consent please contact us (please see contact details section below).

Complaints:

We take any complaints we receive about the collection and use of personal information very seriously.  We would encourage you to bring it to our attention if you think that our collection or use of information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate.  You can make a complaint at any time by contacting us (see contact details section below).

If you think our collection or use of personal information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate or if you have concerns about the security of your personal information, you also have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office.  You can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office at the following address:

Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

Contact us:

If you want to contact us about this privacy policy or want to make a complaint about our collection or use of your personal information, you can e-mail us at enquiries@ongo.co.uk or write to us at the following address:

Ongo House, High Street, Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, DN15 6AT

Tel: 01724 844848

Data Protection Officer

We have appointed a Data Protection Officer to oversee our compliance with this privacy notice.  If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact our Data Protection Officer using the details above.