The Data Protection Act refers to the holding of information on living persons, which can include both paid staff and volunteers. It gives people the right to know what information is held about them, and sets out rules to make sure that this information is handled properly.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is a vital source of information, and we recommend that organisations seek formal professional legal advice where applicable.
What follows is a summary of the ICO’s Employment Code of Good Practice, and how it could be used to shape good practice in volunteer management.
Recruitment
It appears that records held for the purposes of recruitment should be destroyed either as soon as a decision has been taken on whether or not to employ the person, or within six months. Section 1.7 of the Employment Code explains this in more detail.
So, you could record the result of a CRB check and add it to the person’s employment file, but you would then destroy the actual CRB check itself.
In general, you would transfer the information you need from an application form into the employee’s file, then destroy the application form. If your organisation already has a particular process for dealing with employee files that follows Data Protection guidance, then you could adopt this for the volunteer files, to follow good practice.
Equal opportunities monitoring
Section 2.5 of the Employment Code covers Equal Opportunities monitoring, which should form part of your monitoring and evaluation process. You may also want to analyse your monitoring forms for other purposes, such as identifying your best sources of advertising when organising a recruitment campaign.
Retention of records
Section 2.15 of the Employment Code covers the topic of retention of records. Another factor to consider is that you may want to keep certain information for a set time period so that former volunteers can ask for references at a later date (this is covered in section 2.9).
There isn’t specific guidance on what this 'set period' should be, so you have the freedom to choose a consistent and justifiable amount of time. For instance, you could set a period of 6 months for retaining the records of volunteers who have left, but 18 months for those who tell you they might request references in the future.
Non-starters
It is more difficult to decide how long to keep records of people who register but don't start volunteering. We would suggest that you follow-up all registrations where the volunteers 'disappear'. If you get no response from a letter or telephone, you could have a policy of disposing of these records three months after the registration date.
Other statutory obligations
When referring to guidance in the Data Protection Act, you should bear in mind that it doesn’t override any other statutory obligations to hold information. If the volunteers are trustees of a registered charity, then it may be worth checking with the Charity Commission to see if they have any guidance on retaining trustee records.
Another point to consider is that how long you hold information for may also depend on your organisation’s insurance and your funder’s requests. In both cases they may provide their own criteria, on the off-chance that someone brings a complaint against your organisation, and you would have the necessary information available if required for an investigation.
Further information
There is also a useful page on the website of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), which gives mandatory and recommended retention times for different HR records.
Last reviewed: May 2009
Disclaimer
We have made every effort to ensure that this article was correct at the time of publication. It is intended as a summary of relevant issues to help you plan or develop your work with volunteers. Volunteering England is unable to accept liability for any loss or damage or inconvenience arising as a consequence of the use of this information.
Copyright
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