WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS POLICY?  

Hertford Town Council (“the Council”) is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information.

This privacy policy describes how we collect and use personal information about you during and after your working relationship with us, in accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (the retained EU law version of the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679) (“GDPR”).

The Council is a “data controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We are required under data protection legislation to notify you of the information contained in this privacy policy. 

This policy applies to all individuals who engage in services with the Council. This policy does not form part of any contract to provide services. We may update this policy at any time but if we do so, we will provide you with an updated copy of this policy as soon as reasonably practical.

DATA PROTECTION PRINCIPLES  

We will comply with data protection law. This says that the personal information we hold about you must be:

1. Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.

2. Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way     that is incompatible with those purposes.

3. Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.

4. Accurate and kept up to date.

5. Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.

6. Kept securely.

THE KIND OF INFORMATION WE HOLD ABOUT YOU  

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. 

There are “special categories” of more sensitive personal data which require a higher level of protection, such as information about a person’s health or sexual orientation.

We may collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:

• Personal contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, and personal email addresses

• Date of birth

• Address

• Gender

• CCTV footage and other information obtained through electronic means

• Photographs

We may also collect, store and use the following “special categories” of more sensitive personal information:

• Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records

• Ethnic group

• Race

• Religion 

• Trade union membership

• Sexuality

• Biometric data

• Information about criminal convictions and offences

HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION COLLECTED?  

We collect personal information about you if you subscribe to or apply for services that require personal information.

HOW WE WILL USE INFORMATION ABOUT YOU  

We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances:

• Where we need to perform or manage the services you have requested;

• Where we need to prevent and detect fraud and corruption in the use of public funds;

• Where it is necessary to meet our statutory obligations; or

• Where it is necessary in the exercise of our official authority or to perform a task in the public interest that is set out in law.

We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:

• Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests).

• In circumstances where we need your consent. 

Situations in which we will use your personal information

We need all the categories of information in the list above primarily to allow us to provide services to you and to enable us to comply with legal obligations. The situations in which may process your personal information include the following:- 

• to perform the service you requested, and to monitor and improve the Council’s performance in responding to your request;

• to allow us to be able to communicate and provide services and benefits appropriate to your needs;

• to ensure that we meet our legal obligations;

• to prevent and detect fraud or crime.

• to process relevant financial transactions, including grants and payments for goods and services supplied to the Council;

• to allow the statistical analysis of data so we can plan the provision of services.

Some of the above grounds for processing will overlap and there may be several grounds which justify our use of your personal information.

If you fail to provide personal information

If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may not be able to provide the service you have requested, or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations (such as ensuring the health and safety of individuals on our premises).

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

HOW WE USE PARTICULARLY SENSITIVE PERSONAL INFORMATION  

“Special categories” of particularly sensitive personal information require higher levels of protection. We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal information.  We may process special categories of personal information in the following circumstances:

• With your explicit consent.

• Where there is a substantial public interest condition that we can rely on. 

Our obligations  

We will use your particularly sensitive personal information in the following ways:

• We will use information about your physical or mental health, or disability status, to ensure your health and safety while accessing services provided by the Council.

DATA SHARING  

We may have to share your data with third parties, including third-party service providers.

We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law. 

Why might you share my personal information with third parties?

We will share your personal information with third parties where required by law or where it is necessary to administer the services to you.

DATA SECURITY  

We have put in place measures to protect the security of your information. 

Third parties will only process your personal information on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to keep it secure.

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those staff, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. 

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

DATA RETENTION  

How long will you use my information for?

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

Once you are no longer an employee, worker or contractor of the Council we will retain and securely destroy your personal information in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.

Should you wish to obtain more specific information about how long we hold different categories of your personal information for, please contact the DIO.

RIGHTS OF ACCESS, CORRECTION, ERASURE, AND RESTRICTION  

Your duty to inform us of changes

It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your relationship with us.

Your rights in connection with personal information

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

• Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

• Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.

• Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).

• Object to processing of your personal information in certain circumstances. 

• Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.

• Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.

If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please contact the DIO.

RIGHT TO WITHDRAW CONSENT  

In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. 

DATA INFORMATION OFFICER  

We have appointed a DIO, HY Solicitors, to oversee compliance with this privacy policy. If you have any questions about this privacy policy or how we handle your personal information, please contact the DIO by emailing dpo@wearehy.com. You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY  

We reserve the right to update this privacy policy at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy policy when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.