Privacy Notice - Elected Councillors

Our General Privacy Notice sets out further details about how we define personal data, other data controller the council works with, and full details regarding your rights with respect to your personal data. View our General Privacy Notice.

Who we are and what we do

Councillors are elected to the local authority to represent their own community, so either live or work in the local area. We have a wide-ranging role with 3 main areas of responsibility:

• ward representation
• decision making
• community leadership

We are data controllers in our own right and must ensure that any personal information we hold or use in our office as elected members is treated in line with GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. We will only collect the personal data from you that is needed in order to provide you with relevant information, service or support.

Information collected

When you ask for our help and assistance we will need to collect some information from you.

This will generally include personal information such as your name, address and contact information together with details with your problem or concern.

The law treats some types of personal information as 'special' because the information requires more protection due to its sensitivity. This information consists of:

• racial or ethnic origin
• sexuality and sexual life
• religious or philosophical beliefs
• trade union membership
• political opinions
• genetic and bio-metric data
• physical or mental health
• criminal convictions and offences

It will only be necessary to collect this type of information where it is of relevance to the request you are making.

The legal basis for the processing

The legal basis relied on for processing personal information in relation to responding to requests from constituents is:

• consent of explicit consent of the constituent making the request (or any other relevant persons where this is appropriate)
• necessary in pursuit of legitimate interests as an elected representative and those of the constituent and it is assessed these interests override any privacy intrusion involved in processing personal data about other individuals
• discharging functions as an elected representative for the purpose of responding to requests from constituents where this is permissible, without explicit consent.

Who we will share your information with

Personal details and the circumstances of the query/complaint may need to be passed to council officers in order to allow the council to look into the issue. We will not pass personal details of constituents who contact us to anyone else unless required to do so by law or where this is in connection with a criminal investigation.

If you have contacted a councillor about a personal or policy issue, we may pass along your personal data to a third-party in the course of dealing with your request of query, such as local authorities, government agencies, public bodies, health trusts and regulators. Any third parties with whom your data may be shared are obliged to keep your details securely, and to only use your data for purposes already communicated to you.

In any event, your personal data will not only be used in a way that goes beyond reasonable expectations in contacting an elected councillor.

You retain the right to request that information identifying you not be disclosed to third parties, however, please be aware that it may not be possible to progress a matter for you on an anonymous basis.

We may share your data with South Ribble Borough Council as part of the shared services arrangements.

How long we hold your data

Unless specifically requested by you, personal data held for the purposes of responding to requests received from constituents and obtained in the course of our enquiries will only be kept for as long as the law specifies or, where the law does not specify this, for a suitable length of time after the case/enquiry is closed. Routine casework will normally be destroyed after 12 to 18 months, but any records relating to a legal claim may be retained for longer.

You rights relating to personal data

When we collect your personal data we will tell you how we are going to use it. Where we process your personal data, you have a number of right under data protection law. These include:

• the right to access personal data we hold on you
• the right to correct and update the personal data we hold on you
• the right to have personal data erased
• the right to object to processing of your personal data or to restrict it to certain purposes only
• the right to data portability
• the right to withdraw your consent to the processing at any time for any processing of data to which consent was obtained
• the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioners Office.

Contact details

Please contact us if you have any questions about the Privacy Notice or the personal data we hold about you or to exercise all relevant rights, queries or complaints at: The Data Controller, Head of Legal, Democratic and HR Services, Chorley Borough Council, Town Hall, Market Street, Chorley, PR7 1DP

Email: contact@chorley.gov.uk

Telephone: 01257 515151