What is the purpose of this document?

CN Bio Innovations Limited, trading as CN Bio, is a “controller” in relation to personal data. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. You are being sent a copy of this privacy notice because you are applying for work with us, whether as an employee, worker or contractor.

This notice makes you aware of how and why your personal data will be used, namely for the purposes of the recruitment exercise, and how long it will usually be retained for. It provides you with certain information that must be provided under Data Protection Laws such as the UK GDPR and the EU GDPR.

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 kind of information we hold about you

In connection with your application for work with us, we will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:

  • The information you have provided to us in your curriculum vitae and covering letter.
  • The information you have provided to us via our HR Information system, including name, title, address, telephone number, personal email address, date of birth, gender, employment history and qualifications.•
  • Any information you provide to us during an interview.


This information is deemed sensitive and will only be collected for diversity-related monitoring, which you can leave blank.

  • Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, and political opinions.

This information is deemed sensitive and will only be collected if you give us this information during the recruitment process. For example, we may need to provide additional assistance when making a job application or if you need to attend a physical interview with us.

  • Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records.

This information may be requested from you for particular roles, and we will let you know upfront if a role requires information about criminal convictions and offences.

  • Information about criminal convictions and offences.

How is your personal information collected?

We collect personal information about candidates from the following sources:

  • You, the candidate.
  • Recruitment agency where you have supplied your personal data, such as submitting your CV to them.
  • Background check provider: We may use a background check provider to verify your details if you are a successful candidate.
  • Credit reference agency: We may use a credit reference agency if the role requires it and only if you are a successful candidate.
  • Disclosure and Barring Service in respect of criminal convictions: This is only for particular roles with us.
  • Your named referees.

How we will use information about you

We will use the personal information we collect about you to:

  • Assess your skills, qualifications, and suitability for the role.
  • Carry out background and reference checks, where applicable.
  • Communicate with you about the recruitment process.
  • Keep records related to our hiring processes.
  • Comply with legal or regulatory requirements.

Lawful basis of processing: It is in our legitimate interests to decide whether to appoint you to the role since it would be beneficial to our business to appoint someone to that role. We also need to process your personal information to decide whether to enter into a contract of employment with you. We may also process your personal information with your consent.

Process: Having received your CV and covering letter or your application form, we will then process that information to decide whether you meet the basic requirements to be shortlisted for the role. If you do, we will decide whether your application is strong enough to invite you for an interview. If we decide to call you for an interview, we will use the information you provide to us at the interview to decide whether to offer you the role.

If we decide to offer you the role, we will then take up references and/or carry out a criminal record check and/or carry out any other checks before confirming your appointment.

If you do not provide information

If you fail to provide information when requested, which is necessary for us to consider your application such as evidence of qualifications or work history, we will not be able to process your application successfully. For example, if we require a credit check or references for this role and you fail to provide us with relevant details, we will not be able to take your application further.

How we use particularly sensitive personal information

We will use your particularly sensitive personal information in the following ways:

  • We will use information about your disability status to consider whether we need to provide appropriate adjustments during the recruitment process, for example whether adjustments need to be made during the interview process.
  • We will use information about your race or nationality or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, or your sexual life or sexual orientation, to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting. You can refuse to fill in any equal opportunity monitoring forms.

Information about criminal convictions

Depending on the role you apply for, we may need to carry out checks about criminal convictions. We will let you know if this is the case. For example, a role may require a high degree of trust and integrity since it involves dealing, for example, with high-value client money, and so we would like to ask you to seek a basic disclosure of your criminal record history.

Automated decision-making

You will not be subject to decisions that will have a significant impact on you based solely on automated decision-making.

Data sharing

Why might you share my personal information?

We will only share your personal data with individuals who require it as part of the recruitment process. This can be to other members of staff, e.g. Members of our People team, Head of Department, your envisaged line manager, etc.

Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need-to-know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions, and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

Data retention

How long will you use my information for?

Unsuccessful candidate: If you are unsuccessful, we will retain your details for up to 6 months.

We retain your personal information for that period so that we can show, in the event of a legal claim, that we have not discriminated against candidates on prohibited grounds and that we have conducted the recruitment exercise in a fair and transparent way. After this period, we will securely destroy your personal information in accordance with our data retention policy.

If we wish to retain your personal information on file, on the basis that a further opportunity may arise in future and we may wish to consider you for that, we will write to you separately, seeking your explicit consent to retain your personal information for a fixed period on that basis.

Successful candidate: If you are successful and you are employed by us, we will retain your details as in line with our employee retention periods for personal data.

Data subject rights

Under certain circumstances in Data Protection Laws, you have the following rights detailed below. Note that not all rights are absolute, so it will depend on the nature and purpose and why we are processing your personal data.

  • Your right of access: You have the right to ask us for access to your personal data and to certain other supplementary information that this privacy statement is already designed to address.
  • Your right to correction/rectification: You have the right to require us to correct any mistakes in your personal data which we hold. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.
  • Your right to object to processing: This is where we process your personal data based on a legitimate interest or those of a third party, and you may challenge this. However, we may be entitled to continue processing your information based on our legitimate interests or where this is relevant to any legal claims.
  • Your right to request restriction: This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the information’s accuracy (b) where our use of the information is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it (c) where you need us to hold the information even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims or (d) you have objected to our use of your information but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
  • Your right to erasure: You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain situations.
  • Your right to data portability: You have the right to ask that we transfer your personal data you gave us from one organization to another or give it to you in certain situations.
  • Right not to be subject to automated individual decision making: You have the right to object to decisions being taken by automated means which produce legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affect you. We do not carry out automated decision-making which results in legal or similarly significant effects.
  • Your right to withdraw consent: You have the right to withdraw consent at any time to process personal data where consent has been used as a lawful basis. You have a right to opt out of marketing at any time.

Exercising your rights: What we may need from you

If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please:

  • email, call or write to us.
  • let us have enough information to identify you (e.g. name, email address, IP address),
  • let us have proof of your identity and address (a copy of your driving licence or passport and a recent utility or credit card bill), and
  • let us know the information to which you request.

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive, or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

We will always endeavor to respond promptly to any request however this may take up to one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made several requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us.

Concerns and complaints

We would appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns; please contact us in the first instance. If you have unresolved concerns and you live or work in the UK or believe that a personal data breach happened in the UK, you have the right to complain at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk).

If you live or work outside the UK or you have a complaint concerning our personal data processing activities, you may lodge a complaint with another supervisory authority.