Your personal information
What is personal information?
Personal information can be anything that identifies and relates to a living person.
This can include information that when put together with other information can then identify a person.
For example, this could be your name and contact details.
What information do we ask for and why?
To provide services for you, we ask for a wide range of information, some of which is personal and may be required by law or necessary to:
- access funding to deliver specific services to you
- deliver services and support to you
- manage those services we provide to you
- train and manage the employment of our workers who deliver those services
- help investigate any worries or complaints you have about your services
- keep track of spending on services
- hear your views on a range of issues
- prevent and detect fraud
- check the quality of services
- to help with research and planning of new services.
We do not collect more information than we need to fulfil our stated purposes and will not retain it for longer than is necessary.
If we don’t need personal information we’ll either keep you anonymous if we already have it for something else or we won’t ask you for it.
For example, in a survey we may not need your contact details and will only collect your survey responses.
If we use your personal information for research and analysis, we’ll always keep you anonymous or use a different name unless you’ve agreed that your personal information can be used for that research.
We don’t sell your personal information to anyone else.
Certain information needs more protection due to its sensitivity and falls under the term ‘special categories’.
It’s often information you would not want widely known and is very personal to you and for which we need your explicit consent in order to collect and use it (unless required by law).
This is likely to include anything that can reveal your:
- sexuality and sexual health
- religious or philosophical beliefs
- ethnicity
- physical or mental health
- trade union membership
- political opinion
- genetic or biometric data
- criminal history.
How the law allows us to use your personal information
There are a number of legal reasons why we need to collect and use your personal information.
Generally, we collect and use personal information where:
- you, or your legal representative, have given consent (see section below)
- you have entered into a contract with us
- it is necessary to perform our statutory duties
- it is necessary to protect someone in an emergency
- it is required by law
- it is necessary for employment purposes
- it is necessary to deliver health or social care services
- you have made your information publicly available
- it is necessary for legal cases
- it is to the benefit of society as a whole
- it is necessary to protect public health
- it is necessary for archiving, research, or statistical purposes.
Don’t I have to give consent for you to use my personal information?
Generally, the information we hold about you has been collected for a specific purpose.
Your consent may be needed when we want to use your personal information for a different purpose from the original one.
For example, we collect your name and address so we can send Council Tax bills, but we would need your permission if we used this information to send you something else at another time, this is called ‘opting-in’.
If you give consent for this action or any other form of opt-in consent, you have the right to ask for this consent to be withdrawn.
However, your consent is not required when we are obliged under law to assist in the prevention and detection of crime, for example through the National Fraud Initiative - see next section - or where the information is needed to carry out a legal function, such as the collection of Council Tax.
If we have consent to use your personal information, and you wish to withdraw it, contact the Data Protection Officer to let us know which service you’re using so we can deal with your request.