Privacy notices

Last updated 7 February 2022

Introduction

Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council is registered as a Data Controller under the Data Protection Act 2018. The Council is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) as we collect and process personal data about citizens, service users and staff – Registration number Z6933517.

As a public authority, we process personal data because it is necessary for the performance of tasks carried out in the public interest in order to provide public services and to make sure we meet our statutory obligations. There are some other services which involve council systems and employees of Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council and they have their own registrations with the ICO. These are:

• River Tees Port Health Authority (Z5678935) - the Council processes personal information to enable us to provide port health services to businesses and individuals
• Electoral Registration Officer and Returning Officer for Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council – the officer and staff conduct personal data processing to maintain the Electoral Register and conduct elections and referenda
• Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages Superintendent Registrar  –  the registrar and staff process personal information to enable us to provide a service for the registration of Births, Deaths, Marriages and Civil Partnerships.

This notice explains how we use and share your information. Information may be collected on a paper or online form, by telephone, email, CCTV or by a member of our staff, or one of our partners.

For more detailed information, please look at the privacy notice for individual services which may be given on their data collection forms, in a service leaflet, or on their website pages.

Why do we collect your information?

We need to collect and hold information about you, in order to :

• Deliver public services
• Allow us to undertake our statutory functions
• Confirm your identity to provide some services
• Make sure we meet our statutory obligations including those related to diversity and equality
• Understand your needs in order to provide the services you request
• Understand what we can do for you and inform you of other relevant services and benefits
• Obtain your opinion about the service you have received to help us understand our performance
• Update your customer record
• Process financial transactions
• Prevent and detect fraud and corruption in the use of public funds
• Contact you by post, email or telephone

We may not be able to provide you with a product or service unless we process your data in this way.

How we use your information

We will use the information you provide in a manner that conforms to the Data Protection Act. We will endeavour to keep your information accurate and up to date, limited to what is necessary and not kept longer than we need to. In most instances the law sets the length of time information has to be kept.

We will process your information for the following purposes:

• Staff administration – Appointments or removals, pay, discipline, superannuation, work management or other personnel matters in relation to the staff of the data controller
• Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations - Advertising or marketing the business of the data controller, events and activities, goods or services and promoting public relations in connection with that business or activity, or those goods or services
• Accounts and records - Keeping accounts related to any business or other activity carried on by the data controller, or deciding whether to accept any person as a customer or supplier, or keeping records of purchases, sales or other transactions for the purpose of ensuring that the requisite payments and deliveries are made or services provided by him or to him in respect of those transactions, or for the purpose of making financial or management forecasts to assist him in the conduct of any such business or activity
• Property Management - The management and administration of land, property and residential property and the estate management of other organisations.
• Leisure and Cultural Services – The administration of libraries, youth and Community Centres, arts centres and museums, Parks and Allotments and the marketing and advertising of these services
• Education - The provision of education or training as a primary function or as a business activity.
• Assessment and collection of taxes, duties, levies and other revenue
• Administration of Welfare Benefits, Grants and Loan administration – the Administration of housing and council tax benefits, processing applications, assessing claims, payment of benefits and the investigation of suspect claims
• Planning, Licensing, Registration and Regulation – A wide range of licensing and regulatory activity including Environmental Health, Trading Standards, Consumer Protection, Planning and Highways, including the serving of enforcement and other notices and the issue and administration of licences (e.g. taxi drivers and street traders)
• The provision of Social Services, social work services and social welfare
• Public Health including School nursing and Health Visitor services
• Crime prevention and detection and the apprehension and prosecution of offenders
• Corporate Functions including the organisation and administration of Council meetings, the administration and organisation of Elections, economic and community development, health and safety provisions, emergency planning, statutory audit, legal services, research and analysis including surveys, the operation of complaints and petitions procedures
• Other Non-commercial services including the administration of concessionary schemes, town twinning, administration of grants, refuse collection, provision of cemetery and crematoria services (on a non-commercial basis), maintenance of public grounds, provision of management, accountancy and business support services to other organisations (e.g. School governor services)
• To provide an Electoral Registration Service including the maintenance and publication of the Electoral Register and the Open Version of the Register (taking into account elector preference) and disclosure to statutory recipients and to deliver fair and lawful elections
• To provide a Superintendent Registrar service including the Registration of Births, Deaths, Marriages and Civil Partnerships and Citizenship
• To enable us to provide port health services to businesses and individuals
• To safeguard children
• Other Commercial Services including general insurance and claims handling administration, commercial refuse collection, sale of burial plots, provision of cemetery and crematoria services (on a commercial basis), loans administration, administration of carparks, operation of caravan sites
• Data Matching – as part of the National Fraud Initiative for the purposes of prevention and detection of fraud

We will not pass your personal data on to third parties, other than those who are contracted to provide services on behalf of the Council or who process information on our behalf, or because of a legal requirement or public task. We will endeavour to ensure that sufficient steps have been taken to protect the personal data by the recipient.

We will not disclose any information that you provide ‘in confidence’ to us, to anyone else without your permission, except in a few situations where disclosure is required in law, or where we have good reason to believe that failing to share the information will put someone else at risk.

We will collect information from third parties, in certain circumstances, for example as a referral from the Health Service.

We do not routinely transfer or process data outside the European Economic Area unless we have your specific consent or where the nature of the processing requires it (for example, because you have chosen to use an email or other communications service which routes data outside the EEA).

We may process your information using web services that are hosted outside the European Economic Area, but only with data processing arrangements that meet our obligations under the Data Protection Act.

Information Sharing

We may need to pass your information to other people and organisations that provide the services on behalf of the council. These providers are obliged to keep your details securely, and use them only to fulfil your request. If we need to pass your sensitive or confidential information on to a third party, we will only do so where we have a lawful condition of processing.

We may disclose information to other partners where it is necessary, either to comply with a legal obligation, or where permitted under the Data Protection Act (for example where disclosure is necessary for the purposes of the prevention or detection of a crime). We may disclose information when necessary in order to prevent risk of harm to an individual or where it is in your vital interests that we do so.

At no time will your information be passed to external organisations or partners for marketing or sales purposes, or for any commercial use without your prior explicit consent. We will provide further details of what information is shared with other organisations on data collection forms, privacy notices and some service specific privacy leaflets.

There are some council services which are provided jointly with one or more other local authorities within the Tees Valley (this can be known as a shared service). For example, The Local Safeguarding Children Board, hosted by Middlesbrough Council, processes personal data in relation to the work of agencies across Middlesbrough and Redcar and Cleveland, in their safeguarding responsibilities in relation to children. Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council is the host authority for the Multi-Agency Children’s Hub (MACH). Such shared services have a legal basis for the service provision.

National Fraud Initiative

In order to detect and prevent fraud or crime, we are required by law to protect the public funds we administer. We may use any of the information you provide to us for the prevention and detection of fraud. We may also share this information with other bodies responsible for auditing, administering public funds, or where undertaking a public function, in order to prevent and detect fraud. This includes the Cabinet Office, the Department for Work and Pensions, other local authorities, HM Revenue and Customs, and the Police.

Section 68 of the Serious Crime Act 2007 enables public authorities to disclose information for the purposes of preventing fraud, as a member of a specified anti-fraud organisation or otherwise in accordance with any arrangements made with such an organisation.

Emergency response management

Data matching may also be used to assist the council in responding to emergencies or major accidents, by allowing the council, in conjunction with the emergency services, to identify individuals who may need additional support in the event of, for example, an emergency evacuation.

Customer contact records

We use a customer contact centre to log and co-ordinate customer telephone calls and emails to the contact us address. Your basic customer record comprises of your name, address, date of birth, gender, contact details (telephone/email), information which can be used to confirm your identity, a brief summary of your contact with the council, an indicator of the services used, and a customer reference number. This will not contain extensive details of the services you have received. Telephone calls, live chat and emails. We will inform you if we record or monitor any telephone calls you make to us. Calls made direct to, or from, our Customer Service Centre (01642 774 774) are recorded and kept for 12 months from the date of the call. We do not record any financial card details if you then make payments by telephone. If the call is transferred to a member of staff outside the Customer Service Centre, the recording continues. Calls are not recorded if telephoning direct to other service teams on alternative numbers.

Live chat is an alternative to the telephone. You may print or receive an email of your chat record each time. Chat is transcribed and a record kept for 12 months from the date of the recording. These records will be used, to increase your security, for our record keeping of the transaction and for our staff training purposes.

If you email us we may keep a record of your contact and your email address and the email for our record keeping of the transaction. We suggest that you keep the amount of confidential information you send to us via email to a minimum and use our secure online forms and services.

Using our website

If you are a user with general public access, our web site (www.redcar-cleveland.gov.uk ) does capture your personal information in the form of your computer’s IP address which is automatically recognised by the system. The system will further record personal information if you:

• Subscribe to or apply for services that require personal information
• Report a fault and give your contact details for us to respond
• Contact us and leave your details for us to respond

We employ cookie technology to help log visitors to our website. A cookie is a string of information that is sent by a website and stored on your hard drive or temporarily in your computer's memory. The information collected is used for the administration of the server and to improve the service provided by the web site. No personal information is collected this way. You can reject the use of cookies but you may be asked for information again, e.g., to participate in a survey. Further information and how to block cookies is located on our website.

This statement only covers the council websites maintained by us and does not cover other websites linked from our site.

My account – self service

We use a range of different systems, requiring a different account username and password to sign in. We make sure these are kept secure in our systems but you are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account and password and for restricting access to your computers and other applicable devices, and you agree to accept responsibility for all activities that occur under your account or password.

CCTV/Surveillance

We have installed CCTV systems in some of our premises used by members of the public for the purposes of public and staff safety and crime prevention and detection. CCTV is also installed on the outside of some of our buildings for the purposes of monitoring building security and crime prevention and detection.

They are installed in our recycling sites for the purposes of public and staff safety, crime prevention and detection, and the abuse of council policies. They are installed on highways for the purpose of monitoring traffic on a permanent or temporary basis. In all locations, signs are displayed notifying you that CCTV is in operation and providing details of who to contact for further information about the scheme.

Images captured by CCTV will not be kept for longer than necessary. However, on occasions there may be a need to keep images for longer, for example where a crime is being investigated.

You have the right to see CCTV images of yourself and be provided with a copy of the images.

Body Worn Videos (BWV) incorporating audio recording are being used by Civil Parking Enforcement Officers when necessary for operational purposes. The aim of the BWV technology is to:

• Promote the safety of the Officers
• Reduce the potential number of confrontational situations experienced by Officers
• Reduce potential escalation of incidents
• Augment opportunities for evidence capture

You have the right to see images/audio recording of yourself in accordance with the Data Protection Act and be provided with a copy of the images.

We will only disclose images and audio to other authorised bodies who intend to use it for the purposes stated above. Images and audio will not be released to the media for entertainment purposes or placed on the internet for public viewing.

We operate CCTV and disclose in accordance with the codes of practice issued by the Information Commissioner and the Home Office.

How we protect your information

Our aim is not to be intrusive, and we won't ask irrelevant or unnecessary questions. The information you provide will be subject to rigorous measures and procedures to make sure it can't be seen, accessed or disclosed to anyone who shouldn't see it.

We have an Information Governance Framework that includes a Data Protection and Privacy Policy and a set of Information Security policies. These define our commitments and responsibilities to your privacy and cover a range of information and technology security areas. We provide training to staff who handle personal information and treat it as a disciplinary matter if they misuse or do not look after your personal information properly.

We will not keep your information longer than it is needed or where the law states how long this should be kept. We will dispose of paper records or delete any electronic personal information in a secure way.

Your rights

You have the right to be informed of how we process your data including the lawful conditions we rely on, how long your records will be kept for and any third party recipients. You have the right to object to processing and in certain circumstances, where your consent for a service has been sought, you have the right to ask for your records to be removed from our systems or ported to another service provider.

You have the right to request that Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council stop processing your personal data in relation to any council service. However, this may cause delays or prevent us delivering a service to you. Where possible we will seek to comply with your request but, because we are a local authority, it is likely that we may be required to hold or process your information to comply with a legal requirement or for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of our official authority. In such cases the right to erasure will not apply.

We try to ensure that any information we hold about you is correct. There may be situations where you find the information we hold is no longer accurate and you have the right to have this corrected. Please contact the council service/team holding your information.

You are legally entitled to request access to any information about you that we hold, and a copy. We will comply with your request, free of charge, within a month, although we may extend this by two months for more complex requests.

Please see our website for options on how to access your personal information.

Contact information and further advice

If you would like to discuss your information rights further, please contact us:

Data Protection Officer

Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council

Redcar and Cleveland House

Kirkleatham Street

Redcar

TS10 1RT

InformationGovernance@redcar-cleveland.gov.uk

01642 774774

Changes to this privacy notice

We will continually review and update this privacy notice to reflect changes in our services and feedback from service users, as well as to comply with changes in the law.

When such changes occur, we will revise the ‘last updated’ date at the top of this notice and the current version will be published on our website.