Privacy Notice - Licensing: Animal Licensing

Spelthorne Borough Council's Environmental Health Team will be collecting information about your animal activities business. This information will include personal information about you such as your home address, telephone number and email. If you do not provide this information then we will be unable to process your licence application and then you may be operating in breach of the legislation. 

Further information including the number of occasions that you have advertised animals for sale/the number of occasions that you have advertised your boarding facilities, price structure and fees may also be collected.

Evidence from on-site inspections, including photographs, and detailed notes of what was observed may be recorded.

DEFRA's statutory guidance for local authorities is that councils should maintain a list of licensed premises and their associated ratings on their websites.  Therefore basic information from your licence will be published on our website.

In order to comply with the Data Protection Act (DPA) and UK General Data Protection Regulation GDPR, Spelthorne Borough Council must provide you with the following information about the personal data you give to us:

• The Council will use the data provided to consider if you are complying with animal welfare and animal licensing legislation and to form part of our animal licensing register. Your information may be checked with other Local Authorities and organisations to ensure that you do not have a relevant conviction for animal cruelty. The main pieces legislation are the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018. We will use your personal data so we fulfil our legal obligations.
• The Council collects your information when you apply for an animal licence or when we investigate allegations of illegal practice. It is a legal requirement that certain information is provided and kept up to date by those running business where licensing is required. We may collect information about you from publicly available websites that you use to advertise animals for sale and boarding, and the websites themselves. 
• Your information may be shared with other Council services in order to ensure our records are accurate and up-to-date, and to improve the standard of the services we deliver. We will only use your information in ways which are permitted by the data protection legislation.
• When visiting your premises we may be accompanied by a Veterinarian and will share your information with them. If we have concerns about the welfare of your animals then we may ask a Veterinarian to examine them and will share your information with the Vet.
• Where we are required to do so by legislation or require input from other authorities, we may need to pass your personal data on to third parties such as, but not limited to, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), HMRC, United Kingdom Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and Surrey County Council.
• This authority has a duty to protect the public funds it administers and may use information held about you for all lawful purposes, including but not limited to the prevention and detection of crime including fraud and money laundering.
• The Council may also use your information for the purpose of performing any of its statutory enforcement duties. It will make any disclosures required by law and may also share your information with other bodies responsible for detecting/preventing crime including fraud or auditing/administering public funds.
• Your data may also be used in emergency situations when there is a concern regarding the individual's welfare.
• The information will not be passed on to any other third parties.
• We will keep your information for as long as it is required by us or other regulatory bodies in order to comply with legal and regulatory requirements or for other operational reasons. In most cases this will be a minimum of six years after the licence expires or an investigation is closed.
• For further information about how the Council uses your personal data, including your rights as a data subject, please see the back of this form.
• If you have any direct enquiries, Spelthorne Borough Council's Data Protection Officer can be contacted at data.protection@spelthorne.gov.uk

Further information

You have the following rights:

• you have the right to be informed via Privacy Notices such as this,
• you have the right to request access to and to receive a copy of any information we hold about you (including in an electronic format) - to request a copy of this information you must make a subject access request in writing,
• if you find that the information Spelthorne Borough Council holds about you is no longer accurate, you have the right to ask to have this corrected,
• you have the right - under certain conditions - to ask us to erase your personal data,
• you may request that Spelthorne Borough Council stops processing your personal data in relation to any council service (this may delay or prevent us delivering a service to you, we will seek to comply with your request but may be required to hold or process information to comply with our legal duties). 

To exercise any of these rights contact the Data Protection Officer at data.protection@spelthorne.gov.uk.

You also have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). This is an independent body responsible for making sure that organisations comply with Data Protection legislation.

The ICO will always expect you to have raised your concerns with us before submitting a complaint.