Privacy Policy
Our contact details:
Name: Fiona Smith
Phone Number: 07709022787
E-mail: fiona@creativehappyplace.co.uk
We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office ZB799702
Creative Happy Place LTD (trading as Happy Place) company number 15813231 are the Data Controller and are committed to respecting and protecting Your privacy. This Privacy Notice is provided for our prospective, existing and former clients, customers and candidates, as well as users of this website (creativehappyplace.co.uk).
This Privacy Notice tells you about how we process your personal data, including the collection, usage, sharing and storage of your personal data. For details on our use of cookies, please see our separate Cookie Policy https://www.creativehappyplace.co.uk/cookie-policy
We will only process your personal data in accordance with this Privacy Notice (and any other information we give to you about how we process your personal data), and in accordance with the UK’s data protection legislation.
The UK’s data protection legislation means:
The Data Protection Act 2018
The UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR)
The Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations (PECR)
And any replacing or successive data protection act or regulation as may come into effect
If you have any questions about how we process your personal data or would like to exercise any of your rights under the Data Protection Legislation, please contact the Data Privacy Manager using this email address.
E-mail: fiona@creativehappyplace.co.uk
Changes to this Privacy Notice and your duty to keep us informed
This version was last updated on 14th January 2026. It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.
We reserve the right to make changes to this Privacy Notice from time to time. If this Privacy Notice changes in any way, we will place an updated version on our website. Regularly reviewing our website ensures that you are always aware of what information we collect, how we use and store it, and under what circumstances, if any, we will share it with third parties.
Who we are and what we do
We are a recruitment agency and recruitment business as defined in the Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 (our business). We collect the personal data of the following types of people to allow us to undertake our business;
• Prospective and placed candidates for permanent or temporary roles
• Prospective and live client contacts
• Supplier contacts to support our services
• Employees, consultants, temporary workers
Information we collect about you
We collect information about you to carry out our core business and ancillary activities. Personal data, or sensitive personal data (information), means any information about you from which you can be identified. It does not include data where identifiable information has been removed (anonymised).
We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:
Identity Data: includes first name, maiden name, last name, username or similar identifier, marital status, title, date of birth and gender.
Contact data: includes address, email address and telephone numbers.
If you submit a CV and or Portfolio or job application to us, we will store your details securely in our recruitment inbox for up to 18 months in order to consider you for current and future opportunities before it is moved to our database. You may request that we delete your CV and or portfolio at any time by contacting us at fiona@creativehappyplace.co.uk
How we obtain your personal data
Direct: by the provision of your CV and or Portfolio via email, when you give us information via email or online privacy mail systems, during a telephone conversation or in person. We give you the option of submitting your CV and or Portfolio via Linkedin. You can do this either to apply for a specific advertised job or for consideration by our recruitment consultants for positions as they come up. Your CV will be emailed directly to our recruitment consultants who review your details and enter them onto our central in-house database on Office 365 and DropBox. This database, including the information relating to you, can be accessed by any of our recruitment consultants working in the Company.
Third-party jobs boards: by the provision of your CV via 3rd party jobs. Your CV will be emailed directly to our recruitment consultants who review your details and enter them onto our central in-house database on Google Drive. This database, including the information relating to you, can be accessed by any of our recruitment consultants working in the Company.
Third Parties: your referees, details of whom you will have provided previously. Please note that this may include our client/your potential employer contacting such referees; contact, financial and transaction data from providers of technical and payment services based inside or outside the EU; your current employer when you are employed by an umbrella/payroll company or personal service company. Please note: in these circumstances, when you are engaged through such a company, we will be relying on your employer to ensure they have established a legal basis for processing your data with you. Our basis for ongoing processing of your data will become subject to a contract between us and that company.
Publicly Available Sources: Identity and contact data available from Companies House, and the Electoral Register, status, experience and qualifications (including CVs) from job boards including Campaign Jobs, LinkedIn and other industry-relevant boards.
Sensitive and identification data
For some roles, the organisation is obliged to seek information about criminal convictions and offences. Where the organisation seeks this information, it does so because it is necessary for it to carry out its obligations and exercise specific rights in relation to employment law. You will be made aware of this in advance.
In order to verify your identity and to meet legal requirements placed on our clients to validate your right to work in the UK, we request official photo ID such as a passport or driving licence. This data is held securely in our systems and will only be used for the purposes of verifying your identity (which may include sharing with a client, but we will let you know about this in advance). We will obtain your consent for this processing at that time and this may be refused or withdrawn at any time. However, this may impact on our ability to find a job for you.
How we may contact you
Happy Place provides a very detailed and personal service to candidates for their job search. We will contact you either by telephone or by email. This will be possible because we have a legitimate interest as part of providing our service to you and our clients (please see below for more details on our legal basis for processing). This means that you have provided information about yourself on the understanding that we will need to contact you to help you seek new employment.
You can stop these notifications at any time by contacting us at fiona@creativehappyplace.co.uk
If you fail to provide personal data
Where we need to collect personal data by law in order to provide our recruitment services to you, and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to provide further services or assist you in your job search. In this case, we may have to stop our service, but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.
Our legal bases for processing your personal data
How we use the information - To register you as a new candidate
Legal basis of processing - Necessary in our legitimate interests and for you to receive the benefit of our services
How we use the information - To carry out job search and recruitment services and to contact you about potential job roles and our actions on your behalf
Legal basis of processing - Necessary in our legitimate interests and for you to receive the benefit of our services
How we use the information - To manage our relationship with you which will include:
Manage your online account
To log your contract history with us and build a profile about you and your job preferences
Notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy notice
Legal basis of processing - Necessary for our legitimate interest to keep our records updated
How we use the information - Send you information about new services that may be of interest to you
Legal basis of processing - Necessary for our legitimate interests (to develop our products/services and grow our business)
How we use the information - Fraud prevention and detection, to prevent security breaches and other crimes
Legal basis of processing - Necessary for our legitimate interests in preventing and detecting fraud against you or us
How we use the information - To carry out ID verification using passport/biometric data; including criminal record checks when required
Legal basis of processing - Your consent which we will obtain before these checks are carried out
How long we retain your personal data
We will hold your personal data for 6 years (based on the average job change timeline of 5 years), unless we are notified that you are deceased, you ask us to stop processing your personal data and we have now other overriding legal basis or requirement for keeping it.
Data Type - Candidate data including sensitive personal information
Retention Period - 6 years, and thereafter consent requested on annual basis
Where Held - DropBox / OFFICE 365
Lawful Basis - Contract, legitimate interest and consent
Data Type -Client Data (personal information)
Retention Period - 6 years
Where Held - DropBox / OFFICE 365
Lawful Basis - Contract, legitimate interest and consent
Employee personal and sensitive personal information
Retention Period - 6 years / 2 years for ex-employees
Where Held - DropBox / OFFICE 365
Lawful Basis - Contract, legitimate interest and legal obligation
Marketing - We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around marketing and advertising. You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested from us or received services from us and, in each case, you have not opted out of receiving that marketing. At any time you can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages by contacting us at fiona@creativehappyplace.co.uk or by clicking the “Unsubscribe” link in any marketing email you receive from us. Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not apply to personal data which we process in order to provide our recruitment services on your behalf.
Third-party marketing - We will not share your data with third parties for marketing purposes without your express consent.
Change of purpose - We will only use your personal data for the purpose for which it was collected. If this purpose needs to change, we will contact you and ask for your informed consent before any changes are made.
Disclosure of your personal data - For as long as we process your personal data, we may share any of it with any of the following to the extent that they need to have access to your personal data in order to perform their role:
Anyone within our organisation which includes, without limitation, our sales and marketing teams and our finance team.
Selected third parties who help us to perform our services with you. This includes third parties who help us directly such as our recruitment software company DropBox.
The Government and statutory authorities of the United Kingdom, and in particular HMRC.
Our IT service providers who provide, maintain, improve, manage, optimise or fix the IT facilities and systems that we use or rely on in our business, including computing devices, computer networks, connectivity, telecommunications, software.
Our online service providers, who provide marketing and advertising placement services for us, including providers of search engines, behavioural marketing services, and online applications and services including social media.
Any third party company or companies in the event that we go through a business transition, such as a merger, being acquired by another personal or company, or selling a portion of our assets.
With your employer, when you are providing work through an umbrella or personal service company and if you are employed on a Fixed Term Contract or Permanent contract.
We reserve the right to disclose your personal data to other third parties if we have lawful grounds to do so or are under a legal obligation to disclose or share it with them, or in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of the Company. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
Our transfer of your personal data outside the UK
Your personal data is held within a secure area of DropBox where only Happy Place personnel can access. This data is held on servers based in the USA, however DropBox hold all data security accreditations necessary to secure data.
All recipients of personal data outside of the UK are checked to ensure their privacy and security standards comply with the UK GDPR.
Your data protection rights
Under data protection law, you have rights including:
Your right of access - You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.
Your right to rectification - You have the right to ask us to rectify information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.
Your right to erasure - You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.
Your right to restriction of processing - You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your information in certain circumstances.
Your right to object to processing - You have the the right to object to the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances.
Your right to data portability - You have the right to ask that we transfer the information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.
You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. Please contact us at fiona@creativehappyplace.co.uk if you wish to make a request.
How to complain - You can also complain to the ICO if you are unhappy with how we have used your data.
The ICO’s address:
Information Commissioner’s Office,
Wycliffe House,
Water Lane,
Wilmslow,
Cheshire SK9 5AF
Helpline number: 0303 123 1113