Clarke Willmott's recruitment privacy notice

We are committed to protecting your personal information.

This privacy notice describes how we collect and use personal information about you during the recruitment process and applies to all candidates. Whenever we collect and use personal information, we keep to UK data-protection laws and regulations.

This privacy notice is for information only. It is not a contractual agreement.

What information we collect
Why we process personal information
Additional requirements for members
Who has access to your personal information
Additional information relating to soft credit checks
How we protect personal information
AI in recruitment
Transferring information outside the UK or EEA
How long we keep personal information for
Your rights
What happens if you do not provide the personal information we need
Automated decision-making
Changes to this privacy notice
Complaints about how we handle your information

1. What information we collect

If you apply for a job, we will collect, store and use the following personal information about you.

The information you provide in your CV, application, and covering letter or email.
Any information you provide during an interview.

If we offer you a job, we will store and use the personal information that we collect from:

identity checks
checks into your right to work in the UK
DBS screening (a criminal-record check)
a soft credit check (a check of part of your credit report to get a limited view of your financial history), and
references and background checks, such as your past employment, registration with regulatory bodies and certificates.

In certain circumstances, we may check your LinkedIn account and other business-related or public profiles on social media.

We may also collect, store and use the following ‘special categories’ of sensitive information.

Information about your race or ethnic background, religious beliefs, sexual orientation (who you are attracted to sexually and romantically) and political opinions.
Information about your health, including any medical conditions and your health and sickness record with previous employers.
Information about your criminal record.

We may collect personal information from the following sources.

You
Job-search and recruitment agencies
The provider of background checks
Credit reference agencies
Your referees
Publicly available sources (for example, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and the CILEX directory, LinkedIn and social media)

2. Why we process personal information

We need to process personal information (including confirming your identity) to deal with your application, enter into a contract with you if we offer you a job, and keep to legal and regulatory requirements relating to employment. For example, we must check a person’s right to work in the UK before their employment starts.

As a firm of solicitors, we must meet regulatory requirements, including maintaining public trust and confidence. This means that we have a legitimate interest in processing personal information during the recruitment process and in keeping records of the recruitment process. We must also screen staff in line with anti-money laundering regulations.

Processing personal information allows us to manage the recruitment process, assess and confirm an applicant’s suitability for the job, and decide who to offer the job to. In line with SRA guidance, we use personal information to vet staff and partners. We may also need to process personal information to respond to and defend against legal claims.

We process health information if we need to make reasonable adjustments to the recruitment process for you. This is to meet our obligations and exercise specific rights that relate to employment.

If we process other special categories of personal information, this is for monitoring equal opportunities. We are entitled to carry out a DBS check (a criminal-record check) to make sure that there is nothing in your criminal record (if you have one) which makes you unsuitable for the role you have applied for. We use a third party to carry out this check on our behalf, and they may give us a copy of their report if you have given permission for this.

We will only use your personal information for the recruitment process relating to the job you have applied for.

3. Additional requirements for members

If you are joining us as a member, we must give confirmation of your identity to Companies House in order to meet our obligations under The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act (ECCTA). We use SmartCredit Limited (SmartSearch) to carry out identity checks for this purpose. SmartSearch and their contractor, Daon (UK) Ltd, will process your personal information in order to carry out these identity checks.

SmartSearch’s checks use artificial intelligence (AI) to make sure you are a real person and not AI-generatedand to detect potentially fraudulent identities or documents. SmartSearch and Daon (UK) Ltd will not use your information for any other purpose, and will only keep your ID for 30 days. We will download this information and copies of the identity documents used to carry out the check, and will store them securely for seven years, as required under ECCTA.

You can find more about how SmartSearch use your information in the privacy notice on their website at www.smartsearch.com/privacy-notice.

Or you can contact our Data Protection Officer at dataprotection@clarkewillmott.com.

4. Who has access to your personal information

We will share your personal information internally for the purposes of the recruitment process. This includes with members of the HR and recruitment teams, interviewers, managers in the business area the vacancy is in, and IT staff who need access to the information to perform their roles.

If you applied for the job online through our candidate portal, this is securely hosted by a third-party provider, and your personal information will be held within that third party’s system. The third-party provider does not have direct access to your personal information but there may be limited circumstances where, in order to investigate an enquiry, issue or complaint, the provider may need access to the information.

We will not share your personal information with other third parties, unless your application for employment is successful and we make you an offer of employment. We will then share your personal information with:

former employers, to get references for you
the provider we use to carry out employment checks and other background checks, including a DBS check
Companies House (if you are joining as a member), and
Creditsafe Business Solutions Ltd, who process credit checks through a credit reference agency on our behalf.

All our third-party service providers must take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies.

5. Additional information relating to soft credit checks

If we offer you a job, we will carry out a soft credit check through a credit reference agency to:

assess your suitability for the role
make sure we can meet our regulatory requirements in maintaining the public’s trust and confidence, and
carry out effective screening in line with anti-money laundering regulations.

The information we receive may include information relating to your identity, any credit agreements you have, and information from public records such as court judgments. We only use this information for legitimate business purposes and process it in line with UK data protection laws.

We get the relevant information through Creditsafe, which uses its data partner, TransUnion, to supply consumer credit and identity information. These soft credit checks cannot be seen by lenders or third parties, and do not affect your credit score. You may see a soft credit check on your own report, but it will be clearly marked as such.

If you do not give us permission to carry out the soft credit check, we will not be able to go ahead with your job offer.

Creditsafe Business Solutions Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

FCA Firm Reference Number: 742313

TransUnion International UK Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

FCA Firm Reference Number: 805757

There is more information about how Creditsafe and TransUnion process your personal information in their privacy notices.

Creditsafe Privacy/Transparency Notice:
Transparency Notice | Customers & Suppliers

TransUnion CRAIN (Credit Reference Agency Information Notice):
https://www.transunion.co.uk/legal/privacy-centre/pc-credit-reference

TransUnion Bureau Privacy Notice:
https://www.transunion.co.uk/legal/privacy-centre/pc-bureau

6. How we protect personal information

We take the security of your personal information seriously. We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used, altered, shared or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to the employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who need it for business reasons. They will only process your personal information as instructed by us, and must keep the information confidential.

We have procedures in place to deal with any incident that we suspect has affected the confidentiality of information, and will tell you and any appropriate regulator about this if we have to do so by law.

7. AI in recruitment

Applicants for any vacancy can use AI to research the company and how to respond to any questions in the application. However, all responses must be accurate and the final application must not simply be copied from AI or any other source. If AI has been used to complete an entire application, or part of it, we will reject the application.

8. Transferring information outside the UK or EEA

We do not think we will need to transfer your personal information outside the EU during the recruitment process.

If we ever do need to transfer your personal information outside the UK or EEA, we will put appropriate measures in place to make sure that your personal information is protected in a way that is consistent with UK laws on data protection. You can get further details by emailing our Data Protection Officer at dataprotection@clarkewillmott.com.

9. How long we keep personal information for

If your application for employment is unsuccessful, we will keep your personal information on file for 12 months after the end of the recruitment process. After this period, we will destroy your personal information.

If we want to keep your personal information on file in case we can offer you an opportunity for a position in the future, we will write to you separately to ask for your permission to keep your personal information for a fixed period. You can withdraw your permission at any time by contacting a member of our Recruitment Team.

If your job application is successful, the personal information we gathered during the recruitment process will be transferred to your personnel file, where it will be kept for the period set out in our Staff and Member Privacy notice and Data Retention Policy.

10. Your rights

You have the following rights relating to your personal information.

The right to get copies of your personal information.
The right to get your personal information corrected.
The right to get your personal information deleted.
The right to limit how we can use your personal information.
The right to stop or prevent us from using your personal information.
The right to receive your information in a way that is accessible and can be read electronically.
The right to ask us to transfer your information to another organisation.

There are exceptions to the rights above and, although we will always try to agree to your request, there may be situations where we cannot do so.

If you want more information on your rights, or want to exercise any of them, please email our Data Protection Officer (Kat Quinton) at dataprotection@clarkewillmott.com or write to them at:
Blackbrook Gate
Blackbrook Park Avenue
Taunton
TA1 2PG.

11. What happens if you do not provide the personal information we need

You do not have to provide the personal information we ask for during the recruitment process. However, if you don’t provide the information, we may not be able to process your application properly or at all. We will tell you this at the time.

You may be asked to provide information for equal opportunities monitoring. Not providing that information will not affect your application.

12. Automated decision-making

Recruitment processes are not based solely on automated decision-making (decisions being made about you without people being involved).

13. Changes to this privacy notice

We can update this privacy notice at any time.

14. Complaints about how we handle your information

If you believe that we have broken your data-protection or privacy rights, you can complain to us direct by emailing our Data Protection Officer (Kat Quinton) at dataprotection@clarkewillmott.com

or writing to them at:

Blackbrook Gate
Blackbrook Park Avenue
Taunton
TA1 2PG.

Or you can leave a message on 0345 209 1515. You will need to give your name, phone number and a brief description of your complaint.

We aim to respond to you quickly and will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days.

If you are not happy with our response, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office. You can find details about how to do this at www.ico.org.uk.

If you have any questions about this privacy notice, please contact our Data Protection Officer.

Privacy notice for candidates v2.3

Last updated: 17 April 2026

By: Kat Quinton, DPO

Approved by: Daniel Jones, Director of HR

Recruitment privacy notice

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