Data protection policy | Kosmos Recruitment

PRIVACY NOTICE

Kosmos Recruitment Limited, trading as Kosmos Associates

Last updated: 09.09.2026

Kosmos Recruitment Limited trading as Kosmos Associates ("we", "us", "our") is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This notice explains how we collect, use, share and protect your personal information, and the rights you have in relation to it. Please read it carefully.

Who we are

Kosmos Recruitment Limited, trading as Kosmos Associates, is the data controller responsible for your personal information. We are a company registered in England and Wales (company number 09010587). Our registered office is at School Masters House, 39 College Street, Petersfield, Hampshire, GU31 4AG. For the purposes of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018, we are the controller of the personal information we hold about you.

If you have any questions about this notice or about how we handle your information, please contact us at office@kosmosrecruitment.com.

The information we collect

Depending on your relationship with us, we may collect and process the following categories of personal information:

• Identity and contact details: your name, date of birth and contact details (postal address, email address and telephone numbers);

• Recruitment information: your CV, employment history, qualifications, references, right-to-work status and other information relevant to a role;

• Correspondence: records of our correspondence and conversations with you, including notes, emails and, where you are told at the time, call recordings;

• Financial and eligibility information: where you are placed by us or use our payroll services, your bank details, passport details and National Insurance number.

We collect this information directly from you, and sometimes from third parties such as job boards, referees, and publicly available professional sources (for example LinkedIn).

How and why we use your information

We use your personal information to provide recruitment services, to match you with suitable roles, to put you forward to clients with your agreement, to manage placements, and to keep you informed of opportunities. The lawful bases on which we rely are:

• Performance of a contract, or steps prior to a contract: where we are taking steps to place you in a role, or to provide services to a client, at your or their request;

• Legitimate interests: to operate and grow our recruitment business, to contact you about relevant opportunities, and to keep our records accurate. Where we rely on legitimate interests we have considered the impact on you and do not use your information where your interests override ours;

• Compliance with a legal obligation: for example to carry out right-to-work checks and to meet our employment, tax and anti-money-laundering obligations;

• Consent: for certain activities, such as some marketing, where consent is required. Where we rely on consent you may withdraw it at any time.

Identity documents and special category information

From time to time we take a copy of your passport or other identity document in order to confirm your right to work. We collect and keep these documents only to meet our legal obligations, and we delete them once they are no longer required for that purpose.

We do not routinely collect "special category" information such as details of your health or information that reveals your racial or ethnic origin. Should this ever be necessary for a particular role, we will only do so where we have a lawful basis under Article 9 of the UK GDPR and, where required, your explicit consent.

Who we share your information with

We share your personal information only where necessary, and always with appropriate safeguards. We may share it with:

• Prospective employers and clients: with your agreement, so that they may consider you for a role;

• Service providers acting on our behalf: who process personal information on our behalf and under our instructions, for example IT, cloud hosting, and providers of recruitment and administrative tools, including providers of artificial-intelligence tools that help us source, screen and match candidates. Where we use such providers, they act only on our documented instructions, are bound by written contracts requiring them to keep your information confidential and secure, and are not permitted to use your information for their own purposes or to train their own models on it;

• Professional advisers and authorities: such as HMRC, regulators, or other authorities, where we are required to do so by law;

• A buyer or successor of our business: if we sell or reorganise our business, in which case your information may be transferred as part of that transaction, subject to the same protections.

We do not sell your personal information.

Artificial intelligence and automated processing

We may use artificial-intelligence tools to help us carry out recruitment tasks more efficiently, such as summarising CVs, searching our records and suggesting candidates who may suit a role. Where we do so:

• a member of our team reviews the output, and any decision that significantly affects you is made or meaningfully reviewed by a person, not by a machine alone;

• we require our providers not to use your information to train or improve their own systems;

• you may ask us about how such tools are used in relation to you, and you may object to solely automated decisions that produce a legal or similarly significant effect on you.

Transfers outside the United Kingdom

Some of our service providers may process your information outside the United Kingdom. Where they do, we make sure appropriate safeguards are in place, for example that the country has been recognised by the UK as providing adequate protection, or that we have put in place the Information Commissioner's International Data Transfer Agreement or another approved mechanism. You may contact us for more information about these safeguards.

How long we keep your information

We keep your personal information only for as long as necessary for the purposes described in this notice, and to meet our legal and regulatory obligations. In general we keep candidate records for six years from our last meaningful contact with you, unless you ask us to keep you on our books for longer, or the law requires us to keep certain records. We review our records periodically and securely delete or anonymise information we no longer need, and we may contact you from time to time to ask whether you would like to remain on file.

Copies of passports and other right-to-work documents are kept only for as long as necessary to meet our legal obligations, and are deleted once they are no longer required.

How we protect your information

We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal information against unauthorised access, loss or misuse, including access controls, encryption and staff confidentiality obligations. We keep these measures under review. Where we use third-party providers, we require them to maintain equivalent standards.

Your rights

Under the UK GDPR you have the right to:

• be informed and to access: ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you (a "subject access request"). This is normally free of charge;

• rectification: ask us to correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete;

• erasure: ask us to delete your information in certain circumstances;

• restriction and objection: ask us to restrict how we use your information, or to object to our use of it, in certain circumstances;

• portability: ask us to transfer certain information to you or another provider in a portable format;

• withdraw consent: withdraw your consent at any time, where we rely on consent.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at office@kosmosrecruitment.com. We will respond within one month.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal information, please contact us first so that we can try to put things right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK's data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.

Changes to this notice

We may update this notice from time to time. Any changes will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you. Please check back from time to time to stay informed.

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Anti-Slavery Policy

We work with clients and candidates from all over the world. We have an obligation to treat people equally, with respect and dignity, and to prevent slavery and human trafficking. We commit to doing all we can to prevent slavery and human trafficking within our business and our supply chains.

Modern slavery can take many forms including; people trafficking, forced labour, servitude and slavery. As an established recruitment consultancy we take our responsibility for supplying permanent and temporary workers very seriously. We require our employees to be vigilant and identify the signs of potential exploitation and to alert management who will take prompt action.

All Kosmos Recruitment Limited employees are provided with a legally compliant contract of employment
Employees may leave employment giving reasonable notice. Equally, those who are temping for us on client premises are free to leave their assignment by giving reasonable notice.
Pre-employment identity and immigration checks are made for our employees and our candidates. A delay in providing their passport could indicate a modern slavery issue.
Employees and candidates are treated equally, fairly and with respect for their dignity throughout the sourcing, selection and recruitment process and throughout their on-going employment with, or through, us.
We have zero tolerance for discrimination, victimisation or harassment on the grounds of age, sex (including gender reassignment), race (including colour, ethnic or national origin, nationality), disability, martial or civil partnership status, having or not having dependants, sexual orientation, religious belief or political opinion or trade union activity.
We comply with UK law and industry standards in respect of employee wages, benefits, working hours and minimum age and do not make unauthorised deductions from pay.
Where we provide payroll services for temporary workers, we check that the bank account details provided are in the worker’s own name so that there is no suspicion of coercion, forced labour, servitude or slavery.

These polices are implemented and monitored by Commercial Director, Charlotte Howard-Jones. Please also refer to the Company website, via the link below, for our full statement on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking.

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