Privacy Notice: Ubisend

About us

Great Yarmouth Borough Council (the Council), Town Hall, Hall Plain, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, NR30 2QF, 01493 856100, is the data controller for the purposes of the UK General Data Protection Regulations (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA).

How we use your information

Most of the information we process is provided to us directly by you when you make an enquiry, application, pay for a service, or request us to keep in touch via subscribing to our newsletters. The majority of the time the processing of your information is necessary for the Council to undertake a public task as defined under Article 6(1)(e) of the UK GDPR, however there are some occasions when a different lawful processing ground is used. For information about the specific lawful processing ground used please refer to the relevant service privacy notice which can be found on our website here: https://www.great-yarmouth.gov.uk/privacy

Children's information

We collect information about children when an applicant submits a benefit and council tax support claim, housing applications or our staff report a safeguarding issue. We collect this information for the exclusive use of the service you are applying for and do not share this information except with our data processors to provide you service or when we have a legal duty to do so, such as in a fraud investigation.

Data Sharing

We will not share your information to any third parties for marketing purposes. We do not sell trade or rent personal information to third parties.

We use data processors who are third parties who provide elements of services for us. We have contracts in place with our data processors. This means that they cannot do anything with your personal information unless we have instructed them to do it. They will not share your personal information with any organisation apart from us. They will hold it securely and retain it for the period we instruct.

We do share the personal information you provide us internally to help us to provide you with a better service and to prevent fraud. For example:

• If you notify our us of a change of address we may share this information within our organisation across service teams to notify them of your new address. When we share your personal information, we ensure only appropriate access to the information required to fulfil job roles is granted for example we would not share the names of any children submitted on a benefit application with our elections department, as this would not be relevant to that department.
• Our environmental services team may share the results of inspections or reports to enable other departments within the council such as, but not limited to, our planning and housing departments to make informed decisions on individual cases.

We will also share your information with organisations such as the police when we are legally required to do so. 

National Fraud Initiative

We are required by law to protect the public funds we administer and therefore participate in the Cabinet Office's National Fraud Initiative, a data matching exercise to assist in the prevention and detection of fraud. We are required to provide particular sets of data to the Minister for the Cabinet Office for matching for each exercise, as detailed on https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-fraud-initiative

Data matching involves comparing computer records held by one body against other computer records held by the same or another body to see how far they match. This is usually personal information.

Computerised data matching allows potentially fraudulent claims and payments to be identified. Where a match is found it may indicate that there is an inconsistency which requires further investigation. No assumption can be made as to whether there is fraud, error or other explanation until an investigation is carried out.

Data Storage

The period for which we store your personal information depends on the information you have submitted and the reason we are processing your information.

For example, we are required by law to retain financial records for 7 years - so payment records will be kept for 7 years.

Another example is where you have signed up to receive our 'my account' service - we store your personal information based on your consent and will retain your "my account" data for up to 2 years after your last access.

Most of our data is stored within our data centres located in the United Kingdom. All personal data stored within council systems is stored within the European Union.

We do not use systems that transfer data outside of the European Union for storage or processing of personal data.

Once your personal information is no longer required, it will be securely and confidentially destroyed.

Automatic decision making

Our systems do make any automated decisions on the information you provide. Should this situation change in the future this privacy notice will be updated and information given on how you can exercise you right to request human intervention or challenge the decision made.

Profiling

We do not use any means of processing data to establish a profile unless otherwise stated at the time of collection.

Links to other websites

Where we provide links to websites of other organisations, this privacy notice does not cover how that organisation processes personal information. We encourage you to read the privacy notices on the other websites you visit.

Changes to this notice

We keep our privacy notice up to date through regular reviews. Updates will be published on our website. If substantial changes are made to the way in which we obtain and use personal information the website will prominently show an announcement to this effect.

Your rights

You have a number or rights available to you, including, potentially, the right to see copies of all the data we hold about you, to ask for it to be corrected or deleted, to request the Council to restrict what it does with your data in certain circumstances, to object to what the Council may do with your data, and to data portability.

Please note that these rights are not absolute and there are circumstances where they do not apply or the Council may override these rights, however, if this is the case you will be informed of this.

Further information

If you want more information you may contact the Council's Data Protection Officer at gdpr@great-yarmouth.gov.uk or telephone the Council on 01493 846325. If you are unhappy with the way your personal information is being handled you can contact the independent Information Commissioner at: https://ico.org.uk/.