We ask some additional questions during the application process for diversity and inclusion monitoring purposes only.

Answering these questions is entirely voluntary, and your responses have no bearing on your application or the recruitment decision. The data is anonymised, analysed in aggregate, and used solely to help us understand and improve the diversity of our candidate pool and identify any barriers in our recruitment process.

Individual responses are not shared with hiring managers or used in any way to assess individual candidates. You can choose "prefer not to say" for any question.

Wren Sterling ("we", "us") is the data controller for personal data you provide as part of your job application. This notice explains how we use it.

What we collect:
Your application data may include contact details, CV/application content, employment and education history, interview notes, assessment results, and (where relevant) diversity monitoring responses, which are always voluntary and processed as set out below.

Why we use it
We process your data to assess your suitability for the role, manage the recruitment process, communicate with you about your application, and comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, including, where applicable, obligations under the Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SM&CR) for certain roles.

Our legal basis

• Contract / pre-contract steps — to assess and progress your application.
• Legitimate interests — to manage and improve our recruitment process.
• Legal obligation — for regulatory and employment-law compliance.
• Special category data (e.g. diversity monitoring) — your explicit consent, where collected.

Retention

• Unsuccessful applications: retained for 12 months from the date of decision, then deleted or anonymised.
• Speculative/ad-hoc CVs (no role applied for): retained for 12 months from receipt.
• Successful candidates: application data forms part of your employment record and is retained per our employee records retention schedule.

Background screening
We do not conduct background screening during recruitment. For successful candidates, standard pre-employment background screening is carried out as part of onboarding, in line with our regulatory obligations. A separate notice covering this is provided at offer stage.

Sharing your data
We may share your data internally with hiring managers and HR, and with our HR systems provider acting as a data processor on our behalf. We do not sell your data or share it with third parties for marketing purposes.

Your rights
Under UK GDPR you have the right to access, correct, delete, or restrict use of your data, and to withdraw consent where consent is the basis for processing (e.g. diversity monitoring).

Contact us

• Data Protection Officer: Elaine Batchelor — Elaine.batchelor@wrensterling.com
• HR Team: HRenquiries@wrensterling.com
• Wren Sterling, Human Resources Department, 13–19 Derby Road, Nottingham, NG1 5AA
• You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) if you believe your data has been mishandled.