Last updated: 7 October 2026
1. Who we are and what this policy covers
SBM Optimum Ltd (“SBM Optimum”, “we”, “us” or “our”) is the data controller responsible for the personal information collected through this website. We provide residential care, supported living and therapeutic support services for children and young people in Leicester and the East Midlands.
- Registered in England and Wales, company number 14296062
- Registered office: 10 Highway Road, Thurmaston, Leicester, LE4 8FQ
- Email: enquiries@sbm-optimum.co.uk
- Telephone: +44 7950 365009
This policy explains how we collect, use and protect personal information about people who visit sbm-optimum.co.uk, contact us, make an enquiry about our services or apply for a job with us. It is written to meet the requirements of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, as amended by the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025.
Children and young people who use our services, their families and our employees receive separate privacy notices. Those notices explain in more detail how we handle care records and employment records.
2. Information we collect
We only collect the information we need for the purpose you have contacted us about.
When you contact us. If you use our contact form, email or telephone us, we collect your name, email address, telephone number (if you give it), the subject of your enquiry and anything you include in your message.
When you apply for a job. Our online application form asks for:
- your name, preferred name, date of birth, home address, telephone number and email address
- the position you are applying for, your education, qualifications, training and employment history, including explanations of any gaps
- your supporting statement and CV
- details of two referees
- whether you consider yourself to have a disability and any reasonable adjustments you need
- information about criminal convictions, cautions and your Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) certificate and Update Service status
- information about your health that is relevant to the role
- optional equal opportunities information: ethnic origin, gender, marital status, sexual orientation and religion or belief
- your signed declaration that the information you have given is accurate
When you browse our website. Like most websites, our site and the services that support it automatically receive technical information such as your IP address, browser type, device type, the pages you visit and the date and time of your visit. Some of this is collected through cookies and similar technologies, which are explained in section 8.
From other people. If you apply for a job, we will receive information about you from your referees, the Disclosure and Barring Service and, where relevant, previous employers and professional bodies.
3. How we use your information and our lawful basis
The law requires us to have a lawful basis for each way we use personal information. The table below sets out what we do and why.
| Purpose | Information used | Lawful basis (UK GDPR Article 6) |
|---|---|---|
| Responding to your enquiry and giving you information about our services | Contact details and your message | Legitimate interests: answering people who contact us |
| Handling enquiries and referrals from local authorities and other professionals | Contact details and enquiry details | Legitimate interests, and the additional conditions in section 5 where a child is involved |
| Assessing your job application, shortlisting, interviewing and making appointment decisions | Application information and CV | Steps taken at your request before entering into a contract with you; legitimate interests |
| Carrying out the safer recruitment checks required for work with children, including identity, right to work, references, employment history and DBS checks | Application information, referee details, DBS and conviction information | Legal obligation |
| Making reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process | Disability and adjustment information | Legal obligation under the Equality Act 2010 |
| Monitoring equal opportunities in recruitment | Equal opportunities information, used only as anonymised statistics | Legitimate interests (see section 4) |
| Keeping our website secure, working properly and protected from spam and misuse | Technical information | Legitimate interests |
| Showing content from other services on our website, such as our location map | Technical information and cookies | Consent, where the cookies involved are not strictly necessary |
| Meeting our legal and regulatory duties, cooperating with regulators and inspectors, and establishing or defending legal claims | Any relevant information | Legal obligation; legitimate interests |
We do not sell personal information. We only send marketing communications if you have asked us to, and you can opt out at any time. We do not make decisions about you based solely on automated processing.
4. Job applicants: sensitive information and safer recruitment
Some information on our application form has extra protection under the law because it is more sensitive. We handle it as follows.
Health and disability information. We use this to make reasonable adjustments and to confirm that you can carry out the role safely, with adjustments where needed. Our condition for using it is Article 9(2)(b) of the UK GDPR (employment and social protection law), with Schedule 1, Part 1, paragraph 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018. We will never use health information to discriminate against you.
Criminal record and DBS information. Roles working with children are exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, so we ask about convictions and cautions, including those that are spent. You do not need to tell us about any caution or conviction that is “protected” under the DBS filtering rules. Successful applicants must have an enhanced DBS check, including a check of the children’s barred list, before starting work. We use this information under Article 10 of the UK GDPR and Schedule 1, paragraphs 1 and 18 (safeguarding of children and individuals at risk) of the Data Protection Act 2018. A criminal record will not necessarily stop you working with us; we consider each case individually and fairly.
Equal opportunities information. Answering these questions is voluntary and you may choose “prefer not to say”. The information is kept separately from your application, is not seen by the people who assess you and has no effect on the outcome. We use it only to produce anonymised statistics that help us check our recruitment is fair, and we may share those statistics, never individual answers, with the local authorities we work with. Our condition for using it is Article 9(2)(g) of the UK GDPR, with Schedule 1, Part 2, paragraph 8 (equality of opportunity or treatment) of the Data Protection Act 2018.
Where the Data Protection Act 2018 requires it, we keep an appropriate policy document explaining how we protect this information and how long we keep it.
5. Referrals and information about children and young people
Please do not send detailed or sensitive information about a child or young person through our website contact form. If you are a social worker or other professional and would like to make a referral, contact us first and we will agree a secure way to share the referral information.
When we receive information about a child or young person as part of a referral, we use it to assess whether we can meet their needs safely and to plan their care. We rely on our legitimate interests and on our legal obligations under the regulations that apply to our services. Where the information concerns health, wellbeing or safeguarding, we also rely on Article 9(2)(h) of the UK GDPR (provision of health or social care) and Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018, including paragraph 18 (safeguarding of children and individuals at risk). Children and young people we support, and their families, receive a separate privacy notice written for them.
This website is not designed for children and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children through it. If you are a young person we support and want to know what information we hold about you, you can ask your keyworker or the manager of your home, or email us.
If you are worried about a child. If a child is in immediate danger, call 999. Otherwise, contact children’s social care at the local council where the child lives. Our website and contact form are not monitored 24 hours a day and must not be used to report an emergency.
6. Who we share information with
We only share personal information when it is necessary. Organisations that handle information on our behalf must keep it secure and may only use it on our instructions. We may share information with:
- website and IT providers, including our website hosting provider, our email provider, the WPForms form service and Automattic (Jetpack), which helps deliver our website’s images and protect it from misuse
- Google, which provides the map on our Contact Us page and the fonts used on our website
- referees, previous employers, the Disclosure and Barring Service and any registered DBS umbrella body we use, to complete recruitment checks
- local authorities and other professionals involved in a child’s care, where an enquiry or referral relates to that child
- regulators, inspectors, the police and other public bodies, such as Ofsted, where the law requires it or where it is necessary to protect a child or another person from harm
- professional advisers, such as our accountants, lawyers and insurers
- a buyer or successor organisation, if all or part of our business is sold or reorganised, on the same terms as this policy
Transfers outside the UK. Some of our service providers, including Google and Automattic, may process information outside the UK, for example in the United States. Where this happens, we make sure the transfer is protected by safeguards recognised under UK data protection law, such as UK adequacy regulations or the International Data Transfer Agreement.
7. How long we keep information and how we protect it
We keep personal information only for as long as we need it for the purpose it was collected, or for as long as the law requires.
| Information | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| General enquiries | Up to 2 years from our last contact with you |
| Referral enquiries that do not lead to a placement | Up to 2 years from the date of the referral |
| Referrals that lead to a placement | Added to the young person’s care record and kept for the period the regulations require, as explained in our separate privacy notice |
| Unsuccessful job applications | 6 months after the recruitment decision |
| Successful job applications | Moved to your personnel file and kept as explained in our employee privacy notice |
| DBS certificate information | We record the certificate number, issue date and outcome; any copy of a certificate is kept for no longer than 6 months |
| Equal opportunities information | Deleted with your application; only anonymised statistics are kept |
| Website technical information | Up to 12 months |
We may keep information for longer if we need it for legal, regulatory or safeguarding reasons, for example during a complaint, investigation or legal claim.
Keeping your information safe. We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal information. These include secure (HTTPS) connections to our website, restricting access to staff who need it, password-protected systems, regular software updates and backups, and confidentiality and data protection training for our staff. If a personal data breach is likely to put you at high risk, we will tell you, and we will report breaches to the Information Commissioner’s Office where the law requires.
8. Cookies and similar technologies
Cookies are small text files that a website places on your device. Similar technologies include scripts that load content from other services. Our website uses the following.
| Technology | Provided by | What it does | Consent needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essential website cookies | SBM Optimum (WordPress and WPForms) | Keep the site secure, let forms be submitted and protect against spam | No, strictly necessary |
| Image delivery and security | Automattic (Jetpack) | Delivers images quickly and helps protect the site; receives your IP address | No, needed to provide the website |
| Web fonts | Google Fonts | Displays text in our chosen fonts; your browser sends your IP address to Google to load them | No cookies are set |
| Location map | Google Maps, on our Contact Us page | Shows where we are; Google may set its own cookies when the map loads | Yes |
| Social media links | Facebook and X | Links only; nothing is shared until you click through to those sites | No |
You can control and delete cookies through your browser settings. Blocking strictly necessary cookies may stop parts of our website, such as forms, from working.
If we start to use analytics cookies to understand how visitors use our website, we will update this policy first and give you a simple way to opt out, as the law allows.
9. Your rights and how to complain
You have the right to:
- ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you
- ask us to correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete
- ask us to delete your information
- ask us to restrict how we use your information
- object to our use of your information where we rely on legitimate interests
- ask us to transfer information you gave us to another organisation, where this applies
- withdraw your consent at any time, where we rely on consent
Some of these rights have exceptions, for example where we must keep information for safeguarding or legal reasons. To use any of your rights, email enquiries@sbm-optimum.co.uk. There is normally no charge. We may ask you to confirm your identity, and we will respond within one month, or tell you within that month if we need up to two further months because your request is complex.
Complaints to us. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal information, please tell us first by emailing enquiries@sbm-optimum.co.uk with “Data protection complaint” in the subject line, or by writing to us at our registered office. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days, look into it and tell you the outcome without undue delay.
Complaints to the regulator. If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113.
10. Changes to this policy and contacting us
We review this policy regularly and will post any changes on this page with a new “last updated” date. If we make a significant change that affects how we use information you have already given us, we will tell you directly where we can.
If you have any questions about this policy or how we handle personal information, please contact us:
- SBM Optimum Ltd, 10 Highway Road, Thurmaston, Leicester, LE4 8FQ
- Email: enquiries@sbm-optimum.co.uk
- Telephone: +44 7950 365009