Newcastle City Council is committed to protecting your privacy when you use our services.

In accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we have a Data Protection Officer who makes sure we respect your rights and follow the law. If you have any concerns or questions about how we look after your personal information, or you require this information in another format, please contact the Data Protection Officer, Phil Slater at dataprotection@newcastle.gov.uk or by calling (0191) 2116500.

Newcastle City Council is committed to protecting your privacy when you use our services.

The Privacy Notice below explains how we use information about you and how we protect your privacy.

Why we use your personal information

Do you know what personal information is?

Personal information can be anything that identifies and relates to a living person. This can include information that when put together with other information can then identify a person. For example, this could be your name and contact details. 

Did you know that some of your personal information might be classed as ‘sensitive’?

Some information is ‘sensitive personal information’ and needs more protection because of this. It is often information which is very personal to you. This could include information about your:

Why do we need your personal information?

We may need to use some information about you to:

For more detail on the services we provide, please see our Information about our services document.

How the law allows us to use your personal information

There are a number of legal reasons why we need to collect and use your personal information.

Generally, we collect and use personal information where:

If we rely on your consent to use your personal information, you have the right to remove it at any time. If you want to remove your consent, please contact dataprotection@newcastle.gov.uk and tell us which service you’re using so we can deal with your request.

We only use what we need

We will only collect and use personal information if we need it to deliver a service or meet a requirement. 

If we use your personal information for research and analysis, we will always keep you anonymous or use a different name unless you have agreed that your personal information can be used for that research.

We do not sell your personal information to anyone else.  

What you can do with your information

The law gives you a number of rights to control what personal information is used by Newcastle City Council, and how we use it  

You can ask for access to the information we hold on you

We would normally expect to share what we record about you with you whenever we assess your needs or provide you with services. 

However, you also have the right to ask us to disclose to you all of the information held about you. When we receive a request from you in writing, we must give you access to everything you are legally entitled to see that we have recorded about you. 

We cannot let you see any parts of your record which contain:

This applies to personal information that is in both paper and electronic records. If you give us permission, we will also let others see your record (except if one of the points above applies). 

If you cannot ask for your records in writing, we will make sure there are other ways that you can. If you have any queries about access to your information please contact dataprotection@newcastle.gov.uk or phone (0191) 2116500.

You can ask to change information you think is inaccurate

You should let us know if you disagree with something we have recorded about you.

We will correct factual inaccuracies. However, we may not always be able to change or remove certain information we hold about you but we may include your comments in the record to show that you disagree with it.  

If you have any queries about the accuracy of your data, please contact dataprotection@newcastle.gov.uk or phone (0191) 2116500.

You can ask to delete information (right to be forgotten)

In some circumstances you can ask for your personal information to be deleted, for example: 

Please note that we cannot delete your information where:

You can ask to limit what we use your personal data for

You have the right to ask us to restrict what we use your personal information for; where:

you have identified inaccurate information, and have told us about this

where we have no legal reason to use that information, but you want us to restrict what we use it for, rather than erase the information altogether.

When information has been restricted, it can only be used to; ensure secure storage, to handle legal claims and protect others with your consent, or where it is for important public interests of the UK.

You have the right to ask us to stop using your personal information for any council service. However, if this request is approved, this may cause delays or prevent us delivering that service. 

Where possible, we will seek to comply with your request, but we may need to hold or use information because we are required to by law.

You can ask to have your information moved to another provider (data portability)

You have the right to ask for your personal information to be given back to you or another service provider of your choice in a commonly used format. This is called data portability.

However, this only applies if we are using your personal information with consent (not if we are required to by law) and if decisions were made by a computer and not a human being. 

It is likely that data portability will not apply to most of the services you receive from the Council. 

You can ask to have any computer made decisions explained to you, and details of how we may have ‘risk profiled’ you.

You have the right to question decisions made about you by a computer, unless it’s required for any contract you have entered into, required by law, or you have given your consent. 

You also have the right to object if you are being ‘profiled’. Profiling is where decisions are made about you based on certain things in your personal information, e.g. your health conditions. 

If and when Newcastle City Council uses your personal information to profile you, in order to deliver the most appropriate service to you, you will be informed. 

If you have concerns regarding automated decision making, or profiling, please contact the Data Protection Officer who will be able to advise you about how we are using your information.  

Who do we share your information with?

We use a range of organisations to either store personal information or help deliver our services to you. Where we have these arrangements, there is always an agreement in in place to make sure that the organisation complies with data protection law. 

We will often complete a privacy impact assessment (PIA) before we share personal information to make sure we protect your privacy and comply with the law.

Sometimes, we have a legal duty to provide personal information to other organisations. This is often because we need to give that data to courts, for example:

if we take a child into care;

if the court orders that we provide the information; and

if someone is taken into care under mental health law

We may also share your personal information when we feel there is a good reason that is more important than protecting your privacy. This does not happen often, but we may share your information:

in order to find and stop crime and fraud

if there are serious risks to the public, our staff or to other professionals

to protect a child

to protect adults who are thought to be at risk, for example if they are frail, confused or cannot understand what is happening to them

For all of these reasons, the risk must be serious before we can override your right to privacy. 

If we are worried about your physical safety or feel we need to take action to protect you from being harmed in other ways, we will discuss this with you and, if possible, get your permission to tell others about your situation before doing so. 

We may still share your information if we believe the risk to others is serious enough to do so.  

There may also be rare occasions when the risk to others is so great that we need to share information straight away. 

If this is the case, we will make sure that we record what information we share and our reasons for doing so. We will let you know what we have done and why if we think it is safe to do so.

How do we protect your information?

We will do what we can to make sure we hold records about you (on paper and electronically) in a secure way, and will only make them available to those who have a right to see them. Examples of our security include:

Encryption, meaning that information is hidden so that it cannot be read without special knowledge (such as a password). This is done with a secret code or what’s called a ‘cypher’. The hidden information is said to then be ‘encrypted’

Pseudonymisation, meaning that we will use a different name so we can hide parts of your personal information from view. This means that someone outside of the Council could work on your information for us without ever knowing it was yours

Controlling access to systems and networks allows us to stop people who are not allowed to view your personal information from getting access to it

Training for our staff allows us to make them aware of how to handle information and how and when to report when something goes wrong

Regular testing of our technology and ways of working including keeping up to date on the latest security updates (commonly called patches)

Where in the world is your information?

The majority of personal information is stored on systems in the UK but there are some occasions where your information may leave the UK either in order to get to another organisation or if it is stored in a system outside of the EU. 

We have additional protections on your information if it leaves the UK ranging from secure ways of transferring data to ensuring we have a robust contract in place with that third party. 

We’ll take all practical steps to make sure your personal information is not sent to a country that is not seen as ‘safe’ either by the UK or EU Governments.

If we need to send your information to an ‘unsafe’ location, we’ll always seek advice from the Information Commissioner first. 

How long do we keep your personal information?

There is often a legal reason for keeping your personal information for a set period of time, we try to include all of these in our retention schedule.

For each service, the schedule lists how long your information may be kept for. This ranges from months for some records to decades for more sensitive records.  

Cookies and how you use our website

To make our website easier to use, we sometimes place small text files on your device (for example your iPad or laptop) called cookies. Most big websites do this too.

They improve things by:

remembering the things you have chosen while on our website, so you don’t have to keep re-entering them whenever you visit a new page

remembering data you have given (for example, your address) so you don’t need to keep entering it

measuring how you use the website so we can make sure it meets your needs

By using our website, you agree that we can place these types of cookies on your device. 

We do not use cookies on this website that collect information about what other websites you visit (often referred to as privacy intrusive cookies).

Our cookies are not used to identify you personally. They are just here to make the site work better for you. You can manage and/or delete these files as you wish.

To learn more about cookies and how to manage them, visit AboutCookies.org or watch a video about cookies.

How you use this website (Google Analytics)

We use Google Analytics to collect information about how people use this site. We do this to make sure it is meeting peoples’ needs and to understand how we can make the website work better.  

Google Analytics stores information about what pages on this site you visit, how long you are on the site, how you got here and what you click on while you are here.

We do not collect or store any other personal information (e.g. your name or address) so this data cannot be used to identify who you are however the information generated by the cookie about your use of the website, including your IP address, may be transmitted to and stored by Google.

We also collect data on the number of times a word is searched for and the number of failed searches. We use this information to improve access to the site and identify gaps in the content and see if it is something we should add to the site.

Unless the law allows us to, we do not:

share any of the data we collect about you with others, or

use this data to identify individuals

Other people’s cookies

We use videos from YouTube and feeds from other websites such as Facebook and Twitter. These websites place cookies on your device when watching or viewing these pages.

Below are links to their cookie policies:

Turning off cookies

You can stop cookies being downloaded on to your computer or other device by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. If you do this, you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website.

There is more information about how to delete or stop using cookies on AboutCookies.org. You can also opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics.

Further guidance on the use of personal information can be found at ico.org.uk.

Where can I get advice?

If you have any questions about how your personal information is handled, please contact our Data Protection Officer at dataprotection@newcastle.gov.uk or by calling (0191) 2116500.

For independent advice about data protection, privacy and data sharing issues, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at:

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire SK9 5AF

Tel: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745 if you prefer to use a national rate number.

Alternatively, visit ico.org.uk or email casework@ico.org.uk.

Find out more information about our services and how personal data is used.





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