Privacy notice and consent to checks

Who we are

Staffroom24 carries out safeguarding checks for education supply agencies in England. The agency named on your file has asked us to build and hold that file, so your documents come to us and we look after them from there.

The agency decides how your file is used. We handle it on their instructions, which means the agency is the data controller and Staffroom24 is the data processor.

We also hold a little information for our own purposes, set out in What we do for ourselves. For that, Staffroom24 is the data controller.

What we collect

• Your identity: your full name, your date of birth, your photograph and a photographic identity document, together with a dated proof of your address
• Your right to work in the United Kingdom, and the document or share code that evidences it
• Your Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service certificate with a children's barred list check: the certificate number, the date it was issued, the result and its status on the Disclosure and Barring Service Update Service
• Your qualifications, and the certificates that evidence them
• Your references, together with what each referee tells us about you
• Your employment history for the last ten years, with a written explanation against any gap
• Your safeguarding training, its level and the date it expires
• Your contact details: your email address and your telephone number where you give us one, and the messages you exchange with us

Why we collect it

Everything on that list is needed to complete the checks set out in Keeping Children Safe in Education, the statutory guidance that schools in England work to. We carry those checks out on behalf of the agency named on your file so that the file is complete before anybody is asked to make a decision about you.

Our lawful basis for handling this information is that it is necessary for taking steps to enter into a contract of work with you, and that it is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation the agency and the school are under. Criminal record information, including anything you declare about convictions or cautions, is handled under the employment condition in paragraph 1 of Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 2018, because the agency has legal obligations under the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 and the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 to check that you are suitable to work with children. Where that condition does not apply, we rely on the condition for preventing or detecting unlawful acts in paragraphs 10 and 36 of the same Schedule. Our appropriate policy document says how we handle it, and you can ask us for it.

What we do for ourselves

Some of what we hold is for Staffroom24's own purposes, and for these we are the data controller:

• Your Staffroom24 pages and the account behind them, so you can send us your documents and see where your file has got to
• Our contract with you where you pay for your own Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service application: your name, your email address and what was paid and refunded. Our lawful basis is that it is necessary for that contract, and payment records are kept for six years after the end of the financial year, as the tax rules require
• Our record of who did what on your file and when, and the evidence of what you signed, so we can show the checks were done properly and answer a complaint or a legal claim. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in that, and it is kept for as long as your file is

We do not use your file, your documents or your messages to improve our service, to train anything or to market to you. Where you allow it, we count how our pages are used, with your name and anything from your file taken out.

Who sees it

• Staffroom24 staff, which is the people who build and check your file
• The agency named on your file
• A school your file is sent to, when the agency puts you forward for a role there
• Quicker DBS, which runs your Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service application for us and confirms your identity and your right to work through its digital identity check
• The Disclosure and Barring Service, which issues the certificate
• The Teaching Regulation Agency, for the prohibition from teaching check
• The Home Office, for your right to work where you give us a share code
• The companies that hold your file, send our messages and run our video calls for us, each on our instructions only. Each one is named, with where it is, on your privacy page beside this notice
• Anthropic and OpenAI, in the United States, which provide text-reading services our staff use: reading the documents you send so nobody retypes them, and helping our staff and the agency word answers from the records. We have set them up not to receive your criminal record certificate, what you declare about convictions, or health information, and a member of our staff checks what they return before anything goes on your file. Your information goes to them under the UK–US data bridge where they are certified to it, and otherwise under the International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the European Commission's standard contractual clauses

We will also share your file where the law requires it, for example with the police or a court. We do not sell it, we do not advertise with it, and we do not send it anywhere the list above does not cover.

When you register with another agency

If you register with another agency through Staffroom24, the checks we already hold for you are shared with that agency, so you are not asked for them again. What is shared is each check still in date with the day it was checked, your references and the documents you sent us. Anything missing or out of date is checked again.

Signing this notice for a new agency is your agreement to that. If you are signing it now for an agency you have just registered with and we already hold checks for you, they are shared with this agency when you sign.

Nothing else passes between agencies. The earlier agency's details, its notes about you and its dealings with you are never shared with the new agency, and the new agency's are never shared with the earlier one. Neither agency is told which other agency you are registered with.

How long we keep it

We keep your file while you are registered with the agency named on it, and for six years after your last placement or after your registration with them ends, whichever of those two is later. That is so a school, an agency or an inspector can ask about a placement you have already worked. The recording of your ID interview is kept with your file. At the end of that time the file is deleted, including the documents you sent us and the recording.

If your file is never cleared, because you withdraw or a decision is made not to go on, it is deleted twelve months after that, so that a question or a complaint about the decision can still be answered.

Shorter clocks run inside those. The copies we hold of the documents evidencing your right to work, and your photograph, are destroyed two years after you leave the agency's books. Any copy of your Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service certificate, and anything else taken from it, is destroyed six months after the decision on your file. What we keep after that is the minimal record of the check, with your file: the date it was issued, your name, the type of certificate, the position it was for, the certificate number and the decision.

We keep something for longer only where the law requires it, or where a dispute, an allegation or a request from the police or a court needs it kept, and a named person here records why.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct anything that is wrong or incomplete, ask us to erase it where we no longer have a good reason to keep it, ask us to restrict what we do with it while a question about it is settled, object to what we do with it, and ask for the information you gave us in a form you can take to another service. It is free, and we answer within one month. We may ask you to confirm who you are first.

You can use these rights by asking the agency or us. Ask us anything about your file by replying to any message we send you, or use Your data in your Staffroom24 pages. If you ask us, we pass it to the agency and help them answer. If we need something from you to find what you asked for, or to confirm who you are, the month waits until you give it to us. If you withdraw your consent we will stop the checks, and we will tell the agency that the file cannot be completed.

Tell us first if you are unhappy and we will try to put it right: use Your data in your Staffroom24 pages, and we acknowledge a complaint by email straight away. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, which looks after data protection in the United Kingdom.

Decisions about you

Every decision about your file is made by a person: a member of our staff, the agency, or the person who interviews you. A check that needs no judgement is recorded for you when your answers meet its rule, for example a declaration where every answer is no, and a person can always change it. Nothing that could count against you is decided that way.

If you disagree with a decision, tell us what you disagree with and why, through Your data in your Staffroom24 pages or by replying to any message we send you. A person here looks at it again with what you have told us, and tells you and the agency what they found.

What you are agreeing to

By signing this notice you confirm that you have read it, and you agree that Staffroom24 may:

• Contact the referees you have named, and ask them about your work with them
• Apply for and check an Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service certificate with a children's barred list check through Quicker DBS, and check its status on the Disclosure and Barring Service Update Service where it is registered there
• Check your right to work in the United Kingdom and confirm your identity, through Quicker DBS's digital identity check or with your share code on the Home Office online service
• Check the Teaching Regulation Agency record for a prohibition from teaching order, and make a Section 128 direction check where the role requires one
• Verify your qualifications and your safeguarding training with the bodies that awarded them
• Build your employment history for the last ten years, and come back to you about anything in it that needs explaining
• Assess whether an overseas check is needed from that history, and carry one out where it is
• See you on a short ID interview on video, and record it
• Hold the declarations you sign in your Staffroom24 pages
• Share the checks we already hold for you with another agency you register with through Staffroom24, as When you register with another agency says

You also confirm that everything you have told us is true and complete as far as you know, and that you will tell us if anything on your file changes.