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Introduction

Chilton Town Council is registered as a ‘data controller’ under the Data Protection Act as we collect and process personal information about you (this applies to council staff and members of the public).  We process and hold your information in order to provide public services. This notice explains how we use and share your information. Information may be collected on a paper or online form, by telephone, email, CCTV, or by a member of our staff, or one of our partners.

Why do we collect information about you?

We need to collect and hold information about you, in order to:

Deliver public services
Confirm your identity to provide some services
Contact you by post, email, or telephone
Understand your needs to provide the services that you request
Inform you of other relevant services and benefits
Obtain your opinion about our services
Update your customer record
Help us to build up a picture of how we are performing at delivering services to you and what services the people of Chilton need
Process financial transactions
Prevent and detect fraud and corruption in the use of public funds
Allow us to undertake statutory functions efficiently and effectively
Ensure we meet our statutory obligations, including those related to diversity and equalities
We may not be able to provide you with a product or service unless we have enough information.

How we use your information

We will use the information you provide in a manner that conforms to data protection legislation. We will endeavour to keep your information accurate and up to date and not keep it for longer than necessary. In some instances, the law sets the length of time information has to be kept.

We will process your information for the following purposes:

For the service you requested, and to monitor and improve the council’s performance in responding to your request
To allow us to communicate and provide services and benefits appropriate to your needs
To enable us to investigate any complaints
To ensure that we meet our legal obligations
Where necessary for law enforcement functions
To prevent and detect fraud or crime
To process financial transactions, including grants, payments, and benefits involving the council, or where we are acting on behalf of other government bodies, e.g., Department for Work and Pensions
To collect monies owed to us
Where necessary to protect individuals from harm or injury
To allow the statistical analysis of data so we can plan the provision of services
For research purposes
We will not disclose any information that you provide ‘in confidence’ to us, to anyone else without your permission, except in the few situations where disclosure is required by law, or where we have good reason to believe that failing to share the information would put you or someone else at risk. You will normally be informed about this.

Information sharing

We may need to pass relevant information about you to other people and organisations or where we have an information-sharing agreement to deliver a service. These people and organisations are obliged to keep your details securely and use them only in accordance with data protection legislation so you can be confident they all comply with the same privacy principles. Sharing agreements are published where information is shared for specific purposes.

We may disclose information to other partners without consent where it is necessary to comply with a legal obligation, or where permitted under data protection legislation, e.g., where the disclosure is necessary for the prevention and/or detection of crime.

In some cases, where we need to disclose sensitive or confidential information such as medical details to other partners, this will be done in accordance with the lawful basis as required within the legislation.

We may disclose information when necessary to prevent risk of harm to yourself or another individual.

At no time will your information be passed to organisations for marketing or sales purposes or for any commercial use without your prior express consent.

Improving customer records

We are working to make our record-keeping more efficient and be able to provide relevant services more quickly across our partners in Chilton.

When you register on the Chilton Town Council website, this creates a basic customer record which comprises your name, address, date of birth, gender, contact details (telephone/email), information which can be used to confirm your identity, a brief summary of your contact with the council, an indicator of the services used, and a customer reference number. This will not contain extensive details of the services you have received. However, this will also act as an index to other council systems and be able to feed information into them, for example, so you can tell us once of changes to your address and contact information.

Public Health

Aggregated, anonymised, or pseudonymised health data is used by Chilton Town Council in supporting the effective and efficient discharge of its statutory duty and wider responsibilities to improve and protect the health and wellbeing of the populations it serves and reduce health inequalities. For more information on the role and duties of the Public Health function see: [Insert Chilton Town Council Health Website].

Detect and prevent fraud or crime

Chilton Town Council is required by law to protect the public funds it administers. We may use any of the information you provide to us for the prevention and detection of fraud.

Internal Audit is a statutory service in the context of the Accounts and Audit Regulations (England) 2011, which state that “A relevant body must undertake an adequate and effective internal audit of its accounting records and of its system of internal control in accordance with the proper practices” and as such Internal Audit’s role applies to all functions and services for which the Council is responsible.

The Public Sector Internal Audit Standards (PSIAS) and CIPFA’s Local Government Application Note (LGAN), which came into effect April 2013, constitute proper practices to satisfy the requirements for larger relevant local government bodies as set out in the Accounts and Audit Regulations 2011. In order to fulfil the role of providing independent assurance that the Councils risk management, governance, and internal control processes are operating effectively, all data collected by the organisation can be reviewed/examined.

We may also share this information with other bodies responsible for auditing, administering public funds, or undertaking a public function, in order to prevent and detect fraud. This includes the Cabinet Office, the Department for Work and Pensions, other local authorities, HM Revenue and Customs, and the Police.

Section 68 of the Serious Crime Act 2007 enables public authorities to disclose information for the purposes of preventing fraud, as a member of a specified anti-fraud organisation or otherwise in accordance with any arrangements made with such an organisation.

For further information see our page on the National Fraud Initiative at [Insert Chilton Town Council National Fraud Initiative Website].

In limited situations, we may monitor and record electronic transactions (website, email, and telephone conversations). This will only be used to prevent or detect a crime, or investigate or detect the unauthorised use of the telecommunications system and only as permitted by the Telecommunications (Lawful Business Practice) (Interception of Communications) Regulations 2000.

Emergency response management

Data matching may also be used to assist the council in responding to emergencies or major accidents, by allowing the council, in conjunction with the emergency services, to identify individuals who may need additional support during an emergency evacuation.

Telephone calls

When you telephone us, we may need to ask you security questions to check who you are. It may be necessary for us to ring you back or for us to respond in writing to safeguard your information.

Ordinarily, we will inform you if we record or monitor any telephone calls you make to us. This will be used to increase your security, for our record-keeping of the transaction, and for our staff training purposes.

Emails

If you email us, we may keep a record of your contact and your email address and the email for our record-keeping of the transaction. For security reasons, we will not include any confidential information about you in any email we send to you without discussing the risks of doing so with you first. Information you send to us from home or insecure email accounts could potentially be accessed in transit by a third party. We would also suggest that you keep the amount of confidential information you send to us via unsecured email to a minimum and use our secure online services.

Using our website

If you are a user with general public access, the Chilton Town Council website, [Insert Chilton Town Council Website], does not store or capture personal information but merely logs a number called your IP address which is automatically recognised by the system.

The system will record personal information if you:

Subscribe to or apply for services that require personal information,
Report a fault and give your contact details for us to respond,
Contact us and leave your details for us to respond.
We employ cookie technology to help log visitors to our website. A cookie is a string of information that is sent by a website and stored on your hard drive or temporarily in your computer’s memory. The information collected is used for the administration of the server and to improve the service provided by the website. No personal information is collected this way. You can reject the use of cookies but you may be asked for information again, e.g., participate in a survey.

This statement only covers the council websites maintained by us and does not cover other websites linked from our site.

CCTV/Surveillance

We have installed CCTV systems in some of our locations used by members of the public for the purposes of public safety and the prevention and detection of crime. They are used for staff security and monitoring purposes. CCTV may be operated by us or a third party on our behalf.

Transferring information overseas

The council does not routinely transfer information overseas. If we were to transfer your information outside the European Economic Area (EEA), we will let you know and ensure that it is treated with the equivalent level of protection as if we were processing it in the UK.

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