General Privacy Notice

We deliver services to the public as a public authority. In order to do this, we often need to collect and use personal information about you. We must always have a lawful condition for processing your personal data and be fair and transparent with you about how we do so.

We need to collect and hold information about you to -

• contact you, by various methods in order to provide services
• deliver public functions, including law enforcement functions such as -
  • licensing
  • collection of council tax and business rates
  • planning enforcement
  • trading standards
• process financial transactions including grants, payments and benefits involving us, or where we are acting on behalf of other government bodies such as The Department of Work and Pensions
• manage contractual relationships as an employer, a landlord or where we buy or provide services
• protect individuals from the risk of harm or injury
• help us monitor our services and plan improvements and efficiencies
• prevent and detect fraud and corruption and inappropriate use of public funds
• make sure we meet our statutory obligations including those related to equality and diversity, and health and safety
• allow statistical analysis of data (that you cannot be personally identified from) so we can target and plan the provision of services

Wherever possible we will be open and transparent with you about how we use your personal data and who it is shared with.

Service or project specific privacy notices

When you use a specific council service, we will usually let you know how that service will use your personal data through a separate privacy notice. These notices will explain in more detail how a service uses your data.