Customer Services Privacy Notice

We use your personal information to:

• Understand the nature of your enquiry and provide information and advice about services which you are requesting or that we feel may be of benefit.
• Deliver or enable the delivery of our services.
• Make referrals to our services.
• Signpost to other organisations where appropriate.

How the information is processed will depend on the nature of your contact and the service(s) you have requested but may include:

• Identifying information about you (such as name, address, contact details, date of birth, unique identification number (e.g. NHS Number) or passport details,
• Information about your family, household or other support services used,
• Details of services required,
• Previous interactions with us or services already received,
• Financial information
• Information you share with us voluntarily

We may need to collect sensitive information, this is known as special category data. This information is treated with added care due to its sensitivity. This may include the use of information relating to:

• your racial or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical beliefs, your sex life or sexual orientation – this is so we can monitor equality and diversity and the treatment of our customers.
• criminal convictions you may have
• your disability or any other medical or health information – this helps us assess any specific needs you may have so we can provide support.

We rely on the following provisions of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as the lawful bases for processing your personal data; in most cases this will be:

• Article 6 1(e) – Public task
  Somerset West and Taunton Council carry out a number of tasks across all services in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in us and, in some cases, it is necessary to process your personal data in order to undertake such tasks. Our Customer Services operate for the whole council, providing a ‘front door’ to other services.

We rely on the following provision of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as the lawful basis for processing your special category data:

• Article 9 2(g) – substantial public interest
  In order to deliver some services it may be necessary to process data which is classed as special category. This is information about you which, due to the nature of it, is afforded additional protections under data protection law.

Your personal information may be shared with internal departments or with external partners and agencies involved in delivering services on our behalf. However, we will only share information with organisations who will also comply with appropriate data protection laws. You will be informed in the service specific privacy notice of who your data may be shared with (if at all) and appropriate contracts or agreements will be in place to ensure the data sharing is appropriately managed.

Data security is particularly important to us. We will ensure that your data is always kept safe and secure.

• We handle your information responsibly and respect your confidentiality
• We only collect and process data where it is necessary for us to do so
• We only collect the data we need for a specified purpose
• We securely delete / destroy data when it is no longer required
• Are open with you about how we use your data and who we may share it with respect to your privacy rights

Training is delivered to staff with access to customers' personal information.

Customer Services record telephone conversations (inbound and outbound) for quality monitoring, training purposes, complaint management or at a customer’s request. Calls recordings are retained for 100 days.

Calls to the Deane Helpline are also recorded for quality monitoring, training purposes or complaint management and are retained for 3 years in accordance with our regulators’ requirements.

A full list of the rights you may have under Data Protection law is given in the main privacy notice. You have a number of rights to control how we manage and share your information. For example:

• Right of access
• Right to be informed
• Right to object to processing
• Right to rectify errors
• Right to restrict the processing
• Right to be forgotten
• Right to data portability
• Right in relation to automated decision making

If you wish to complain about how your personal information has been handled by us then please contact our Data Protection Officer, email dataprotection@somersetwestandtaunton.gov.uk in the first instance. If you are not satisfied you can submit a formal complaint to the Council.

If you are not satisfied with our response to your complaint, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority, The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) in writing to: The Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF, telephone 0303 123 1113 or by visiting the Information Commissioner’s website.