Blackburn with Darwen Council is committed to ensuring that we are transparent about the ways in which we use your personal information and that we have the right controls in place to ensure it is used responsibly and is kept safe from inappropriate access, theft or misuse.
We provide a broad range of services as well undertaking regulatory and administrative activities. These include the provision of education, child protection and care services (supporting early years, vulnerable adults and the elderly), the collection of taxes, administration of local welfare benefits and grants as well as our regulatory, enforcement and licensing activities.
This notice explains how we use your personal information and tells you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.
Personal information
Personal information can be anything that identifies and relates to a living person. This can include information that when linked with other information, allows a person to be uniquely identified. For example, this could be your name and contact details.
The law treats some types of personal information as ‘special’ because the information requires more protection due to its sensitivity. This information consists of:
- Racial or ethnic origin
- Sexuality and sexual life
- Religious or philosophical beliefs
- Trade union membership
- Political opinions
- Genetic and bio-metric data
- Physical or mental health
- Criminal convictions and offences
Purposes
Your personal information may be collected and used for one or more of the Council’s services, regulatory functions and/or administrative activities depending on your relationship with the Council and nature of your contact with us.
Generally, we may need to use some information about you:
- in delivering services and ensuring other statutory or voluntary agencies with whom the council is working, are able to deliver ‘joined up’ services to you
- in planning future services;
- collecting taxes, administering grants and welfare benefits
- for managing and checking the quality of our services;
- keeping track of spending on services;
- if you apply for a job or become employed by us;
- for ensuring the health and safety of our staff
- to help investigate any concerns or complaints you have about our services and for answering enquiries under access legislation;
- in carrying out our regulatory activities, such as enforcement, planning, safeguarding, licencing etc.;
- to improve the general experience of our customers and of visitors to our websites
- for managing any one line transactions you may elect to make and/or marketing choices or preferences you may have expressed
- in the event of civil disasters and/or emergencies
- for archiving, research, or statistical purposes (including research and evaluation undertaken by the Council or in combination with neighbouring authorities to inform future service planning where the use of fully anonymised information would frustrate the purpose of the research)
Personal information
Generally we collect personal information where:
- you, or your legal representative, have given consent
- you have entered into a contract with us
- it is required by law (such as where this is mandated by statute or under a court order)
- it is necessary to perform statutory functions (including law enforcement functions)
- it is necessary for employment related purposes
- it is necessary to deliver health or social care services
- it is necessary to protect you or others from harm (e.g.in an emergency or civil disaster)
- it is necessary to protect public health
- it is necessary for exercising or defending legal rights
- you have made your information publicly available
- it is necessary for archiving, research, or statistical purposes
- it is necessary in the substantial public interest for wider societal benefits and is authorised by law
- it is necessary for fraud prevention and the protection of public funds
- when it is in our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) provided your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests
Your personal information may also be shared with other organisations, such as those who assist us in providing services and those who perform technical operations such as data storage and hosting on our behalf.
These practical arrangements and the laws governing the sharing and disclosure of personal information often differ from one service to another.
For this reason, each of our key service areas provide additional information about how we collect and use your information. These service specific privacy notices explain:
- why we need your information
- who else we obtain or receive it from
- the legal basis for collection and the choices you have
- who we share it with and why
- whether decisions which legally affect you are made solely using machine based technologies
- how long we keep your information
- how to exercise your rights
Service specific privacy notices
Please see the privacy notices section.
National Data Opt-out
What is the national data opt-out?
It is a service that enables the public to register to opt out of their confidential NHS patient information being used for purposes beyond their individual care and treatment. It was introduced for the health and social care system in England on 25 May 2018. The public can change their national data opt-out choice at any time.
What’s its purpose?
It is to give the public a choice about whether their confidential NHS patient information is shared for research and planning.
Who needs to comply with national data opt-out policy?
The national data opt-out applies to data for patients/clients where their care is provided in England by a publicly funded organisation or the care has been arranged by a public body such as the NHS or a Local Authority, it does not apply to data related to private patients/clients at private providers.
In summary the national data opt-out applies to:
- all NHS organisations (including private patients treated within such organisations)
- all Local Authorities providing publicly funded care
- adult social care providers where the care provided is funded or arranged by a public body
- private or charitable healthcare providers providing NHS funded treatment or arranged care
Blackburn with Darwen Council have procedures in place to assess future uses or disclosures against the national data opt-out operational policy guidance and are ready to implement it if needed for future data uses or disclosures.
Data transfers beyond EEA
We will only send your data outside the European Economic Area (‘EEA’):
- with your consent, or
- to comply with a lawful and legitimate request, or
- if we use service providers or contractors in non EEA countries.
If we do transfer your information beyond the EEA, we will make sure that it is protected in the same way as if it was being used in the EEA. We will use one of these safeguards:
- Transfer it to a non EEA country with privacy laws that give the same protection as the EEA. Learn more on the European Commission Justice website.
- Put in place a contract with the recipient that means they must protect it to the same standards as the EEA. More information is available on the European Commission Justice website.
- Transfer it to organisations that are part of the Privacy Shield. This is a framework that sets privacy standards for data sent between the US and EU countries. It makes sure those standards are similar to what is used within the EEA. You can find out more about the Privacy Shield on the European Commission Justice website.
If we propose to make a transfer in response to a lawful and legitimate request we will normally tell you in advance unless there are compelling reasons, such as law enforcement or, reasons of safety which justify not doing so.
Automated decisions
If we make a decision which legally affects you by using a computerised system or programme that does not involve a human being, our service specific privacy notices will explain this. Our data protection information outlines the procedure to ask us for an automated decision to be reviewed by an appropriate officer.
Data retention/criteria
We will only keep your personal information for as long as the law specifies or where the law does not specify this, for the length of time determined by our business requirements.
Data rights
In order to understand more about your data rights please see our data protection information where we will help you discover how you can request personal data we hold about you.
Queries
If you have any queries in relation to your personal information please contact us.
Cookies
Cookies on this website
Like most websites we use ‘cookies’ to collect anonymous statistics about how people use the site, and to help us keep it relevant for the user. Cookies ‘remember’ bits of information from your visit to the site.
A cookie is a simple text file that’s stored on your computer or mobile device by a website’s server. Only that server can retrieve or read the contents of that cookie. Each cookie is unique to your web browser. So if we put a cookie on your computer, it can’t be read by any other website.
We use two types of cookie:
- ‘session cookies’ : These last as long as your current visit to the site, or for up to a limited amount of time if you keep the site open without using it. They mean you don’t have to keep re-submitting information as you move through the site or carry out transactions.
- ‘persistent cookies’ : These remember information from previous visits, for example names and details for online forms. They are used to collect anonymous statistics about how many people use the site, and to maintain any settings (such as accessibility) you have changed.
How we use cookies to collect statistics
To improve our service we collect anonymous web statistics using a web service called Google Analytics.
They store several cookies on users’ computers or mobiles devices to tell us how many people have visited each web page, how they got there, and where they navigated to from there. The data collected is completely anonymous and does not store any personal details.
Changing your cookie settings
You can change your computer settings at any time to accept all cookies, to notify you when a cookie is issued, or not to receive cookies. How you do this depends on your web browser.
Find out more at on the About Cookies website