Renfrewshire Council

Renfrewshire Council takes the privacy of your personal data very seriously. We have set out below what information we collect, how we collect it, what we do with it, who we share it with and why. You can contact us on 0300 300 0300.  You can also contact our Data Protection Officer, Allison Black, on dataprotection@renfrewshire.gov.uk.

We need to handle personal information about you so that we can provide better services for you. This is how we look after your information.

When we ask you for personal information, we will:

• make sure you know why we need it
• ask only for what we need
• protect your personal information and make sure nobody has access to it who shouldn't
• take proportionate precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal information
• let you know if we share it with any other organisations to give you better public services
• make sure we don't keep it longer than necessary, and
• not make your personal information available for commercial use without your permission.

In return, we ask you to:

• give us accurate information, and
• tell us as soon as possible if there are any changes, such as a new address.

This helps us to keep your information reliable and up to date.

Your rights

You have the following rights:

• The right to be informed about how your information will be used.
• The right of access to your personal information.
• The right to rectification, which is the right to require the Council to correct any mistakes.
• The right to request the erasure of any personal information held by the Council where the Council no longer has legal reason to hold the information.
• The right to request that your information is only processed in certain ways.
• The right to data portability.
• The right to object to the Council processing your personal information.

These are not absolute rights are there may be circumstances where the Council is legally obliged to process your information in a particular way. Some examples are listed below.

Your details will be accessed by the Council staff who need this to provide you with a service and if the service is provided by an external agency, that agency. We are also legally obliged to protect public funds, so details will be checked internally for fraud prevention and verification purposes and may be shared with other public bodies for the same purpose.

Sharing your information

The Council is legally obliged to share certain data with other public bodies such as Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and will do so where the law requires this; the Council will also generally comply with requests for specific information from other regulatory and law enforcement bodies where this is necessary and proportionate. Information is also analysed internally in-order to provide management information and improve service delivery.

Consent

We will not ask for consent in cases where we need to process your information to carry out our public functions. If we have asked for your consent to process your information, you have the right to withdraw this, in whole or in part, at any time. We will explain any consequences of this to you, including any impact on the service we are delivering.

Transferring our information outside the UK or European Economic Area

The Council will not transfer personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA) unless this cannot be avoided. The Council will only transfer data outside the UK and the EEA when it is satisfied that the party which will handle the data and the country it is processing it in will provide adequate safeguards for personal privacy. On the occasions when it does transfer your information outside the UK or the European Economic Area, the Council will inform you. 

Profiling and automatic decision making

The Council do not use profiling or automated decision-making processes. Some processes are semi-automated (such as anti-fraud data matching) but a human decision maker will always be involved before any decision is reached in relation to you.

How long we keep your information for

The Council will only keep your information for as long as necessary. Full details of how long the Council usually retains your information can be found in the Council's Retention and Disposal Schedule. However, there may be circumstances where we may need to keep your information for longer. Once the Council no longer needs to keep your information, it will be securely destroyed.

Right to complain

When we ask you for information, we will abide by all relevant legislation, including the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). However, if you are unhappy with the way we process your personal data you have the right to complain. Any complaints regarding your data should be addressed to the Data Protection Officer, Allison Black on dataprotection@renfrewshire.gov.uk. If the matter is not resolved, you can contact the Information Commissioner's Office, who can also provide independent data protection advice. The address and contact details for the Information Commissioner's Officer are:

45 Melville Street
Edinburgh
EH3 7HL
Telephone: 0131 244 9001
Email: scotland@ico.org.uk

You can email the Data Protection Officer dataprotection@renfrewshire.gov.uk for more details on:

• what information we hold about you and how to ask us to correct any mistakes
• agreements we have with other organisations for sharing information
• circumstances where we can pass on your information without telling you, for example, to prevent and detect crime or produce anonymised statistics
• our instructions to staff on how to collect, use and delete your personal information and
• how we check information we hold is accurate and up to date, and

If you do not have access to the internet, you can contact us on 0300 300 0300 for hard copies of any of this information.