Privacy Policy

Privacy Statement

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) use Engage as our online application system and as an applicant tracker system. Engage is hosted and serviced by peoplesolutions.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) is the Controller of the personal data that held in Engage, our Applicant Tracker System and provided to SEPA. peoplesolutions, is the Processor of the personal data held and that is provided to SEPA .

What data do we hold?

If you submit an application for a vacancy at SEPA, you will provide personal data. The personal data held includes sensitive information. This information includes an identifier, name, email addresses, work and personal contact information provided to peoplesolutions by SEPA, in addition to the IP address you used to connect to the service. Equalities and reference information will also be held.

Why we need this data?

The data is required in order for SEPA to use peoplesolutions services in the administration of our recruitment and selection processes and for SEPA to meet our legal obligations, public duties and statutory requirements as an employer and as a public sector organisation.

What we do with your data?

All personal data is processed and stored securely within the UK by peoplesolutions and their subcontractors. Data is processed only in connection with the recruitment and selection services provided to SEPA and for business necessity, such as the requirement for SEPA to report recruitment equality information. No third parties have access to your personal data unless the law allows them to do so. No data is transmitted outside of the European Union.

SEPA and peoplesolutions have a Data Protection regime in place to oversee the effective and secure processing of your personal data.

How long is your data kept?

Your application account holder information will be retained if your account has been used in the last 6 months or is associated with a live application, eg. one that is for an open recruitment campaign or for a vacancy that has closed within the last six months. Application information will be anonymised 1 year from the relevant vacancy closing date and retained for 3 years.

What are your rights?

If at any point you believe the information we process on you is incorrect you can request to see this information. You may have a right to have this information corrected, deleted and to object to or restrict the processing of the information held. You may also have a right to receive the information in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format and transfer or have this information transferred to another data controller.


If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data you should contact our Data Protection Officer to have the matter investigated dataprotection@sepa.org.uk

If you are not satisfied with the response or believe we are processing your personal data not in accordance with the law you may make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).