Privacy Policy
Data Protection/GDPR – Privacy Notice(s)
Fair Oak and Horton Heath Parish Council is fully committed to full compliance with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation. The Council will therefore follow procedures which aim to ensure that all employees, elected Members, contractors, consultants, and partners who have access to any personal data held by or on behalf of the Council are fully aware of and abide by their duties under the General Data Protection Regulation.
Statement of Policy
The Parish Council needs to collect and use information about people with whom it works in order to operate and carry out its functions. These may include members of the public, current, past and prospective employees, clients and customers and suppliers. In addition, the Parish Council may be required by law to collect and use information in order to comply with the requirements of central government. This personal information must be handled and dealt with properly however it is collected, recorded and used and whether it is on paper, in computer records or recorded by other means.
The Parish Council regards the lawful and appropriate treatment of personal information as very important to its successful operations and essential to maintaining confidence between the Council and those with whom it carries out business. The Council, therefore, fully endorses and adheres to the Principles of the General Data Protection Regulation.
Handling personal/special category data
Fair Oak and Horton Heath Council will, through management and use of appropriate controls, monitoring and review:
- Use personal data in the most efficient and effective way to deliver better services
- Strive to collect and process only the data or information which is needed
- Use personal data for such purposes as are described at the point of collection, or for purposes which are legally permitted
- Strive to ensure information is accurate
- Not keep information for longer than is necessary
- Securely destroy data which is no longer needed
- Take appropriate security measures to safeguard information (including unauthorised or unlawful processing and accidental loss or damage of data)
- Ensure that information is not transferred abroad without suitable safeguards
- Ensure that there is general information made available to the public of their rights to access information
- Ensure that the rights of people about whom information is held can be fully exercised under the General Data Protection Regulation. These rights include:
- The right to be informed
- The right of access to personal information
- The right to request rectification
- The right to request erasure
- The right to restrict processing in certain circumstances
- The right to data portability
- The right to object to processing
The Council has an Information Rights Policy which provides further guidance on these rights.
The Principles of Data Protection
Anyone processing personal data must comply with 6 (legally enforceable) principles of good practice. These require that personal data shall be:
- Processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to individuals
- Collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes; further processing for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes shall not be considered to be incompatible with the initial purposes;
- Adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which they are processed;
- Accurate and where necessary, kept up to date; every reasonable step must be taken to ensure that personal data that are inaccurate, having regard to the purposes for which they are processed, are erased or rectified without delay;
- Kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed; personal data may be stored for longer periods insofar as the personal data will be processed solely for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes subject to implementation of the appropriate technical and organisational measures required by the GDPR in order to safeguard the rights and freedoms of individuals;
- Processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data, including protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage, using appropriate technical or organisational measures.
The GDPR provides conditions for the processing of any personal data. It also makes a distinction between personal data and 'special category' data.
Personal data is defined as any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.
Special category data is defined as personal data consisting of information as to:
- Racial or ethnic origin
- Political opinion
- Religious/philosophical beliefs
- Trade union membership
- Physical or mental health or condition
- Sexual life or sexual orientation
- Biometric data
Please see the Council's General Privacy Notice for further information about how data held by the Council is processed.
Cookies
Cookies are tiny data files stored on your hard drive while you visit a website. They cannot extract private or personal information from your computer's memory, but merely enable our server to identify your computer and recognize or "remember" you if you return. They may, for instance, be used to retain your personal preferences such as text size. Fair Oak and Horton Heath Parish Council does not and will not use cookies or any other technology to track user activity when not on our site, and will not pass user data to other websites or third parties.
Research and Feedback
Fair Oak and Horton Heath Parish Council uses records of the pages users have visited on the Council website to analyse trends and improve the Parish Council website. Our records do not contain any personal information about users. Any reports resulting from data collected from the Fair Oak and Horton Heath Parish Council website are based on anonymised data and cannot be used to identify individuals.
Feedback submitted via the online feedback form is used to monitor and improve our service. It is not necessary to include all your details when giving us feedback unless you wish to receive a reply. We do not keep a record of e-mail addresses or contact details unless you request us to do so.
Information is handled only by Fair Oak and Horton Heath Parish Council staff in accordance with Data Protection guidelines and is held in the strictest confidence. We do not pass on personal details to other people or organisations.
Links
The Fair Oak and Horton Heath Parish Council website contains links to other sites. Please be aware that Fair Oak and Horton Heath Parish Council is not responsible for the privacy practices or content of other websites.