Processing personal data
What is personal data
“Personal data” means any information relating to a person who can be identified, directly or indirectly, from that information. This could include a person’s name, identification number, location data, online identifier (such as IP address), or factors specific to the physical, physiological, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that person.
Personal data might be provided to us by you or someone else, or it could be created by us.
Sensitive information
Some of the services we provide require us to process personal information that is more sensitive.
Read about the rules that apply when processing these ‘special categories’ of personal data.
Purpose of processing
We collect, hold and use personal data provided by individuals to enable us to provide services to them. These services include, but are not limited to: child and adult care, safeguarding, social services, schools and early years, planning, trading standards, youth offending, Council Tax, public health, waste management, libraries, parking services, leisure services, customer services, care homes, human resources, housing and benefit services.
Further services that the council provides can be found on the a to z section of the website.
The amount and type of information we hold on you depends on the services we are providing to you. We will not ask you for any information which is not necessary for the service we are providing to you.
Conditions of processing
We will process your personal data in accordance with the data protection principles which are designed to ensure that we:
- process your information lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner
- use your information for a specified, explicit and legitimate purpose and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with that purpose
- only obtain adequate, relevant and limited information to allow us to carry out the purpose for which it was obtained
- ensure the information we hold about you is accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date
- keep any information for no longer than necessary for the purposes for which it was collected
- process your information in a manner that ensures appropriate security of your personal data, including using appropriate technical or organisational measures to protect against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage
Lawfulness of processing
Processing of personal data shall be undertaken ‘lawfully’, which means one of the following conditions should apply (unless exempt):
- you have given consent to the processing of your personal data for one or more specific purposes
- processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party, or in order to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract
- processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the council is subject
- processing is necessary to protect your vital interests or the vital interests of another natural person
- processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the council
- processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests. Public authorities, such as the council can only rely on legitimate interests if they are processing for a legitimate reason other than performing their tasks as a public authority
Page last updated: 1 May 2024
