Privacy

1. Council contact details

1.1. West Northamptonshire Council
One Angel Square
Angel Street
Northampton
NN1 1ED

Tel: 0300 126 7000

The following privacy notice applies to Consultation and Engagement activity at West Northamptonshire Council.

1.2. Why we collect information about you

West Northamptonshire Council collects information from a wide range of local persons and or businesses, such as council taxpayers, those visiting West Northamptonshire, or those appearing to have an interest in any area within which we carry out functions. The information allows us to develop plans and services and help with our decision making.

The Council has a responsibility to carry out its duties equally and fairly. The information provided as part of a consultation or engagement activity helps us to analyse our policies and practices, and helps to ensure we do not discriminate or disadvantage people by treating them less favourably.

2. Information that we hold

2.1. Can include some or all of the following depending on the consultation or engagement activity – this information is usually optional and not providing this information will generally not exclude someone from taking part unless the provision of that information is crucial to ascertaining their views:

  • name
  • contact details
  • demographic information relating to protected characteristics as defined by the Equality Act 2010: age, sex, ethnicity, religion or belief, health or disability, pregnancy or maternity status, sexuality, gender identity, marital status
  • relationships information eg number of / ages of children, health or disability of children
  • caring responsibilities
  • job role (if responding on behalf of an organisation)
  • your response

3. How the information is obtained

3.1. 

  • electronically through an online survey form
  • paper survey form
  • face to face interview with an interviewer using a paper or electronic survey
  • or if you contact the Council directly or sign up to a Consultation and Engagement service. This includes face to face contact, telephone calls, letters and emails

3.2. There are a number of reasons why we need to collect and use your personal information. Generally, we collect and use personal information where:

  • the council is legally obliged to carry out certain consultations and in other instances, consultation and/or engagement activities which are carried out as they are considered to be a task which is in the public interest

You are not obliged to provide any special category data in response to a consultation and/or engagement. If you do disclose this type of information, the council is able to process it as this function is considered to be of substantial public interest.

Where we do ask for personal information the reason will be clearly specified and no information collected will be used to identify or contact you unless this is clearly specified. Personal information will be anonymised so individuals cannot be identified in reports or other publicly available information. We will use any personal information to see how representative the feedback is of West Northamptonshire’s population. We will also use it to see if any particular groups of people are especially affected by our proposals.

4. What do we do with the information

4.1. The information provided in response to a consultation and engagement allows the Council to engage with individuals, communities and other stakeholders to seek their views and aspirations for West Northamptonshire. Overall consultation and engagement results and intelligence are used to inform:

  • service improvement/ plans
  • investment
  • planning the commissioning or decommissioning of services
  • policy and strategy development
  • understanding who uses our services (and where there may be gaps)
  • and other local authority activities

4.2. Who we will share your information with

Only relevant and identifiable employees have access to information held in relation to consultations and/or engagement activities.

The Consultation and/or engagement may be hosted or conducted on behalf of the Council by a provider such as Delib or an agreed third party service. Any relevant third party Privacy Notices will be provided at the outset of each consultation or survey.

Anonymised data may be provided to relevant organisations such as partners, stakeholders or statutory bodies. This will depend on the subject matter but may include:

  • North Northamptonshire Council
  • Partners we work with, for example Kier
  • Central government
  • Ombudsman and regulatory authorities
  • Providers of services

Other partners in the Residents' Panel

5. How long we keep your information for and how we securely dispose of it after use

5.1. We keep your personal information for all aspects of processing by the Consultation and Engagement Team in line with the council’s retention schedules.

5.2 We will securely dispose of your information in line with the Council's Retention Schedules.

How long do we keep your records?

We will process any personal information we receive from you in line with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (Regulation (EU) 2016/679), the Data Protection Act 2018 and West Northamptonshire Council’s data protection policy and guidelines. This means that West Northamptonshire Council will hold your personal data and only use it for the purpose for which it was collected. Data will be kept for the purposes of processing and analysing the data, and depending on the data it will be held for either seven years or for an indeterminate amount of time (until we no longer need it). Information will be securely destroyed when no longer needed.

We will also, under normal circumstances, not pass your personal data on to anyone else. However, we may be asked under access to information laws to publish or disclose some, or all, of the information you provide, including any personal information. We will only do this where such disclosure will comply with such relevant information laws which include the Freedom of Information Act 2000, the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004.

5.2. We will securely dispose of your information in line with retention periods.

6. How we store your information

6.1. Your information is securely stored on the Council’s systems.

7. Your data protection rights

7.1. The law gives you a number of rights to control what personal information is used by us and how we can use it. Please see section 15 of the council’s Privacy Policy for further information.

7.2. Please be aware that your rights may differ depending on the lawful basis for processing your personal data.

7.3. The right to withdraw consent (if applicable). You can ask that we no longer use your details for this consultation and engagement activity. If you wish to exercise this right, please contact the Data Protection Officer detailed in section 8.1 below.

8. Who to contact

8.1. If you would like further information about how we use your personal information, or you wish to exercise one of your data rights or you wish to complain about the use of your personal information please contact the Data Protection Officer.

8.2. If you are still dissatisfied once you have contacted the Data Protection Officer, you have the right to complain to the ICO.

The ICO’s address:
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

9 Changes to this privacy notice

9.1 Privacy notices are live documents, which will be updated or revised in line with legislation.

Last updated 10 May 2022

Delib Privacy Information

Delib's software (this website) enables organisations to set up and operate activities, through which they can engage with you.

This site is managed by the controlling organisation, West Northamptonshire Council. When you access and use this site, the personal information you have submitted to these activities will go to the organisation. Delib will not access your personal information unless requested to do so by the organisation, and only for the purposes of assisting them with the administration of this site.

Accessing your Personal Information

If you have any questions or requests about your personal information, for example to request a copy of it, or to ask for it to be corrected if you think it is wrong, please contact the organisation (as stated in their Privacy Notice / Privacy Statement / Privacy Policy). It is the controlling organisation's responsibility to answer any questions or requests about your personal information.

Collection of Browser Information

The information provided by your computer when you use this website is collected by Delib. For example, your browser type, IP address, language preference, referring site and the date and time. The purpose for collecting this information is to maintain the security of the website and for operating and improving the software.