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Privacy Policy - Science Council

Information on our Science Council's privacy policy, why we require data, what we do with the data and your rights.

Why we need it

The Food Standards Agency will be what is known as the ‘Controller’ of the personal data provided to us.

We need to collect this information for the purpose of appointments to the FSA Science Council and in the case of successful applicants, information for general business in respect of the administration connected to your role in the committee.


We do this in line with the performance of our statutory duties and the exercise of the official authorities vested in the FSA and the performance of tasks carried out in the public interest. We will not collect any personal data from you which we do not need. 


Failure to provide the information requested could result in your application being rejected or delays to your application being processed. In the case of successful candidates, failure to provide the information could result in a delay to general committee business.

What we do with it

We retain personal information only for as long as necessary to carry out these functions, and in line with our retention policy. This means that this information will in the case of unsuccessful candidates be retained for 5 years from receipt. In the case of successful candidates, we will hold the information until 6 years after the term of your appointment ends.

All the personal data we process is located on servers within the European Union. Our cloud based services have been procured through the government framework agreements and these services have been assessed against the national cyber security centre cloud security principles.

No third parties have access to your personal data unless the law allows them to do so. In line with this commitment your information may be passed to other members of the recruitment panel who may not be FSA employees. The Food Standards Agency will sometimes share data with other government departments, public bodies, and organisations which perform public functions to assist them in the performance of their statutory duties or when it is in the public interest.

Your rights

You have a right to see the information we hold on you by making a request in writing to the email address below. If at any point you believe the information we process on you is incorrect you can request to have it corrected. If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, you can contact our Data Protection Officer who will investigate the matter.

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