Privacy Notice - Neighbourhood Services

Spelthorne Borough Council will be collecting your personal data in order to process your request.

In order to comply with the Data Protection Act and General Data Protection Regulation, Spelthorne Borough Council must provide our residents with the following information about the personal data you give to us:

• the Council will use the data provided to the Council's Neighbourhood Services department to allow us to answer any enquiries that you contact us with

We may use your information to:

• allow the Council to be able to communicate with you and provide services that are appropriate for your needs
• plan, monitor and improve the quality of those services
• process financial transactions such as payments and benefits, including where the Council is acting on behalf of other government bodies eg Department for Work and Pensions
• protect individuals from harm or injury
• prevent and detect fraud and other crimes
• where the Council exercises its enforcement functions, for instance licensing and planning enforcement
• undertake legal proceedings, including prosecutions by the Council
• ensure that the Council fulfils its duties under the general law including those imposed under the Equalities Act 2010, the Health and Safety Acts, the Local Government Act 2000 and Public Sector Internal Audit Standards
• to ensure that Spelthorne Borough Council provides you with an efficient and effective service we will sometimes need to share your information between teams within the council as well as with our partner organisations
• we may disclose your information to others, but only where this is absolutely necessary, either to comply with our legal obligations or as permitted by Data Protection legislation. This includes for the purpose of the prevention and/or detection of crime, or where it is necessary to allow a third party working for or acting on behalf of the Council, to provide a service
• the majority of personal information is stored on systems in the UK however there are some occasions when the information is stored elsewhere. The Council will keep your data for as long as is necessary; how long varies in different services and there is often a legal reason for the length of time.  Further information is available in our retention schedules on our website
• if you do not provide this data the Council can no longer continue to process your enquiry
• for information about your rights regarding your personal data, please see below
• 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.