Privacy Policy

ANGUS COUNCIL: Full Privacy statement

What is personal information?

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. This notice explains the high-level principles we operate to in using your personal data and under what conditions we share your information.

Some personal information might be ‘special’

Some information is ‘special’ and needs more protection due to its sensitivity. It’s often information you would not want widely known and is very personal to you. This is likely to include anything that can reveal your:

• religious or philosophical beliefs
• ethnicity
• physical or mental health
• trade union membership
• political opinion
• genetic/biometric data
• sexuality and sexual health
• criminal history

What is processing?

‘Processing’ of personal data means any operation or set of operations that is performed upon personal data, whether or not by automated means, such as collection, recording, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, deletion or destruction.

Angus Council is committed to safeguarding and protecting your personal information and using it in compliance with data protection law. When collecting and using any personal information about you, the Council is committed to doing so in accordance with our obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.

What we do with your personal information

We use personal information so that we can provide public services, carry out our statutory functions and to meet our legal obligations as a public authority or where required for employment purposes. Personal information may be collected on a paper or online form, by telephone, email, data transfer etc. by a member of our staff or one of our partners (for more details see below under Information Sharing).

We will use your details to provide you with the service which you or someone else has asked us to provide for you. We will also use your personal details to prevent and detect crime and/or when required by law and will share it with other public bodies such as HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) or the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) for those purposes.

Why do we collect information about you?

We collect and hold information about you so that we, or another public body providing services which are connected with ours, can

• confirm your identity to provide services
• contact you by post, email, SMS text messages or telephone
• understand your needs to provide the services you or someone else on your behalf ask for
• understand what we can do for you and tell you about other services and benefits you may need or want
• ask for your opinion about our services
• update your customer record and to see if there is a change in your situation
• help us to build up a picture of how we are performing and what services the people of Angus need
• prevent and detect fraud and corruption in the use of public funds
• allow us to carry out statutory functions efficiently and effectively
• make sure we meet our statutory obligations including those related to diversity and equalities.

How we collect information

• Telephone calls, meetings

We do not record or monitor any telephone calls made to us, nor any meetings we may have with you.

• Live chat or personal messaging

They are an alternative to telephone contact. You can print [or receive an email of] your chat record each time. A record is kept for not longer than is necessary in line with the council’s retention schedule. These records will be used for our record keeping and for staff training purposes and kept for as long as required to provide the service to you or as required by statute.

• Emails

If you email us we may keep a record of your email address and the email for our record keeping. We suggest that you keep the amount of confidential information you send to us via email to a minimum and use our secure online forms and services.

• Use of the council’s website

If you are a user with general public access, the Angus Council website does not store or capture personal information other than a log of your IP address which is a number that can uniquely identify a specific computer or other network device on the internet etc.. The system will only record other personal information if you enter it in order to:

• subscribe to or apply for services that require personal information
• report a fault and give your contact details for us to respond
• contact us and leave your details for us to respond

We employ cookie technology to help log visitors to our web site. A cookie is a string of information that is sent by a web site and stored on your hard drive or temporarily in your computer’s memory. The information collected is used for the administration of our server and to improve the service provided by the web site. No personal information is collected this way. You can reject the use of cookies, but you may be asked to input information again on your next visit, e.g. to participate in a survey. Further information and how to block cookies is located on our cookies page. This statement only covers the council web sites maintained by us and does not cover other web sites linked from our site.

• MyAngus account – online service

With a MyAngus account you can access a range of public services online. It checks who you are and requires an account username and password. The service is managed by the Improvement Service and the council receives the personal details which we need to provide a service to you. We are keeping these details for as long as required to provide the service or as required by statute. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account and password and for restricting access to your computers and online device, and you agree to accept responsibility for all activities that occur under your account or password.

How we use your information

We will use the information in a manner which conforms to the General Data Protection Regulations and the Data Protection Act 2018. To the extent required, we will endeavour to keep your information accurate and up to date and not keep it for longer than is necessary in line with the council’s retention schedule and prescribed periods that may be set in statute.

For most purposes, we will only process your information where necessary to allow us to carry out a statutory function or comply with a legal obligation to do so. In these cases, we will make sure that the gathering, holding and use of your personal data is kept to a minimum and in accordance with the terms of this privacy statement or a more specific privacy notice. We will not use your personal details for any other purpose without obtaining your consent, unless otherwise necessary as explained in this statement.

When we seek your consent for additional use of your personal information, we will make clear what use you are consenting to. We will not use your personal details for any other purpose without getting your further consent.

For some regulatory activity carried out by us, it will be necessary for information contained within your application to be published and potentially discussed in open committee. This will be made clear on any relevant application forms and supporting documentation. For matters decided by council committees, the reports and minutes of these committees are normally public documents and will be published on the council’s website.

Information sharing

We may need to pass your information to other people and organisations that provide a statutory service or where we are required by law to do so. The main organisations we share information with are:

• NHS Tayside
• Police Scotland and other criminal investigation agencies
• Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
• Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC)
• Scottish Government
• National Fraud Initiative
• Scottish Public Services Ombudsman
• Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC)
• Scottish Social Services Council
• (UK) Information Commissioner (ICO)
• Scottish Children’s Reporter’s Administration
• The Care Inspectorate
• General Teaching Council for Scotland
• Disclosure Scotland
• Angus Health and Social Care Partnership in relation to health and social care
• Mental Welfare Commission
• Office of the Public Guardian
• registered social landlords
• external regulators
• social care providers
• financial inclusion services
• other advisory agencies that provide assistance to the public

These organisations are obliged to keep your details securely and in line with their statutory obligations. We will only disclose information to other partners where necessary, either to comply with a legal obligation, or where permitted under data protection legislation, for example where the disclosure is necessary to carry out a statutory function or where it is in the public interest to do so such as for the prevention and/or detection of crime. This could include the need to disclose sensitive or confidential information such as medical details to other partners.

When we share your information, we only share those pieces of information that are necessary for other people to do their part in meeting your health and social care needs.

We may also share information with other bodies responsible for auditing and administering public funds in order to prevent and detect fraud.

We may disclose information when necessary to prevent risk of harm to an individual.

At no time will your information be passed to external organisations or our partners for marketing or sales purposes or for any commercial use without your consent.

Health and Social Care

To enable us to help you to maintain your health and wellbeing and access health and social care services we need to collect information about you, your circumstances, your health and your social care needs. This may include your name, gender, address, national insurance number, email address, photograph, telephone numbers, and unique online identifiers such as IP addresses, which are numbers that can uniquely identify a specific computer or other network device on the internet etc.

Our aim is not to be intrusive, and we won’t ask irrelevant or unnecessary questions. We only collect and process personal information about you for the following purposes:

• to assess your health and social care needs
• to organise or provide services to meet those needs
• to help us improve health and social care services in Angus
• to help us improve and protect the health and wellbeing of the population of Angus

The law gives us the authority to do this in order to protect your vital interests, to carry out our legal duties to provide health and social care services, and to enable us to contract with other organisations to provide you with care and support.

We may use your information to process financial transactions in relation to health and social care services including grants, payments and benefits involving the council or NHS Tayside, or where we are acting on behalf of other government bodies, e.g. DWP.

There are also some circumstances under which we may be required by law to process your personal information for other purposes. These purposes include the prevention of fraud, the detection of crime, protecting vulnerable adults, and monitoring our services to make sure do not discriminate against anyone.

Detection and prevention of crime

We have a legal obligation to safeguard public funds and we reserve the right to check the information you have provided for accuracy in order to detect fraud. This may involve data matching exercises where we compare different sets of data which we hold for unusual matches or discrepancies; this may also include matching council data with external data sources such as information held by credit reference agencies.

We also take part in anti-fraud data matching exercises carried out by other agencies such as the National Fraud Initiative (operated on behalf of Audit Scotland) and the Housing Benefit Matching Service (conducted on behalf of the DWP) as we have a duty to manage public funds properly. As a result, we will use the information you provide to make sure all amounts we are owed are paid on time, for example, by identifying people who have not paid Council Tax and to help people who are entitled to benefits to claim them.

Where outstanding money is owed, we may also share your information with debt management partners and the courts. We may also share your information for the same purposes with other public organisations, including neighbouring councils that handle public funds, and with the police. We may also share your details with other organisations, including credit reference agencies, to help prevent and detect fraud and to confirm who is living at a particular address.

There is also an expectation that we will assist in the prevention and detection of crime and we will therefore generally supply specific information which we are asked to provide to the police or other crime detection agencies. However, we will only do this where we are satisfied that it is necessary to avoid harm being caused to any specified investigation and that the disclosure would be lawful and proportionate.

Required by law

By law, we must provide information to certain other public bodies such as the DWP, HMRC, courts, tribunals and other formal bodies dealing with legal processes, advisory agencies providing assistance to the public and various external regulatory bodies.

Other public bodies

We work closely with many public bodies. Information will generally only be shared with them on a statutory basis or with your consent and you should always be made aware when services are to be provided to you on a joint basis. The integration of health and social care has resulted in more information being exchanged with NHS Tayside within the remit of the Angus Health and Social Care Partnership. The contact details of the Partnership are set out below.

Contractors

External contractors are appointed to process information on behalf of the council and under its instruction. All contractors are appointed under written contracts requiring them to keep personal information safe and prohibiting them from doing anything with the personal data they process for us other than strictly in accordance with our instructions.

Statistics and reports

We carry out statistical analyses of the information we hold to monitor our performance and to improve service delivery. These statistics do not identify any individuals and may be published or shared with other organisations or individuals. We also carry out research and help other bodies carry out research using the information we hold where there is a legitimate interest in doing so. We may also share information with other public bodies as part of a project to produce better population estimates for the area.

However, at no time will we carry out research or allow anyone using our information to do so, where the outcome of that research will be

• used in any way to make decisions about any individuals concerned in the research;
• carried out in a way that substantial damage or substantial distress could be caused to any individual whose information is being used as part of the research.

We or anyone with access to our information when carrying out research will only use or give access to anonymised information unless it is necessary to use personal information that identifies individuals.

Public statements

If someone makes a public statement about the council and we have information showing it to be wrong, we may publicise the fact that we have information to contradict it. We may ask for your consent to publish our information if it involves you. If you refuse, we may make your refusal to consent public.

Evictions

We will, by law, be contacted by your landlord if you are facing eviction from your home. We have a duty to assist in these circumstances; this assistance is provided by our financial inclusion service. If you are threatened with eviction, you may receive an unsolicited letter from our financial inclusion services outlining what help they can give you and explaining that they act on our behalf.

Specific privacy notices

This statement sets out the general uses of personal information by the Council. However, there may be situations where the personal information gathered, obtained, held and used by us is to be used in a way that is not explained in this notice. In these cases, you will be given specific statements about how your information will be used.

CCTV/Surveillance

We have installed CCTV systems in some of our premises used by members of the public, for the purposes of public and staff safety and crime prevention and detection. CCTV is also installed on the outside of some of our buildings for the purposes of monitoring building security and crime prevention and detection. Likewise we may deploy cameras in areas of persistent fly-tipping for the prevention and detection of crime. CCTV is installed in our recycling sites for the purposes of public and staff safety, crime prevention and detection, and to prevent and detect the abuse of council policies.

Images captured by CCTV will not be kept for longer than necessary. However, on occasions there may be a need to keep images for longer, for example where a crime is being investigated.

You have the right to see CCTV images of yourself and be provided with a copy of the images.

Body Worn Videos (BWV) incorporating audio recording are being used by staff when necessary for their protection or for operational purposes.

The aim of the BWV technology is to:

• promote the safety of the officers
• reduce the potential number of confrontational situations experienced by officers
• reduce potential escalation of incidents
• augment opportunities for evidence capture for the purposes of criminal and/or civil proceedings

We operate CCTV and disclose recordings in accordance with the code of practice issued by the ICO. You have the right to see images/audio recording of yourself in accordance with data protection legislation and be provided with a copy of the images.

We will only disclose images and audio to other authorised bodies who intend to use it for the purposes stated above. Images and audio will not be released to the media for entertainment purposes or placed on the internet for public viewing.

How we protect your information

Your personal information is held in securely stored paper records within Angus Council, or electronically on secure servers operated by, or on behalf of, Angus Council. Information processed by the Angus Health and Social Care Partnership may be held in secure facilities of NHS Tayside and/or other social and health care agencies providing services for or on behalf of the partnership.

No one has access to the personal information we hold unless it is necessary to enable us to carry out our duties towards you or to protect your vital interests. No third parties have access to your personal data unless permitted by law or unless we have contracted with them to provide services on our behalf. Everyone who has access to your personal information is bound by a duty of confidentiality and must adhere to data protection principles.

We never sell your information to third parties for any purpose including marketing. We do not provide your information to any other public bodies or departments unless the law requires us to do so.

We will dispose of paper records or delete any electronic personal information in a secure way.

Your rights

The personal information we hold about you is your information and the law gives you a number of rights in relation to that information:

• You have the right to be informed about the information we hold and how we process it
• You have the right to access all the information we hold about you as prescribed by the data protection legislation
• You have the right to require us to rectify any errors in the information we hold about you
• You can ask for your personal information to be deleted under certain circumstances but we can’t delete your information where we are required to have it by law, where it is used for freedom of expression, for public health or statistical purposes; for scientific or historical research, where it would make information unusable or where it is necessary for legal claims
• You have the right to ask us to restrict your information from being processed under certain circumstances
• You have the right to object to us collecting or processing personal information about you though this may affect our ability to provide services to you
• 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’re using your personal information with consent (not if we’re required to by law) and if decisions were made by a computer and not a human being. It is likely that data portability won’t apply to most of the services you receive from the Council.

Contact details & advice

The council has a Data Protection Officer who makes sure we respect your rights and follow the law. If you wish to exercise any of the above rights, discuss your information rights further or are concerned about the use of your data please email informationgovernance@angus.gov.uk:

Alison Watson Data Protection Officer Angus Council Angus House Orchardbank Business Park Forfar DD8 1AN Tel: 03452 777 778 Email: informationgovernance@angus.gov.uk

If you wish to exercise any of the above rights with regard to your adult social care records you may want to speak directly to the Data Protection Officer of the Angus Health and Social Care Partnership. Data Protection Officer Angus Health and Social Care Partnership St Margaret’s House Orchardbank Business Park Forfar DD8 1WS Tel: (01307) 492611 Email: AHSCPDataProtection@angus.gov.uk

Where appropriate we may discuss with you the most appropriate way to obtain the information you are looking for, for example, where the information is held by NHS Tayside.

In addition, Angus Council needs to be sure of your identity and to make sure that you have the right to see the information you are asking to see. We will usually require proof of identity, for example, a passport, driving licence, birth or marriage certificate. For this reason, we may have to contact you before we can accept a request as valid.

We will reply to a valid request within one month of receiving your request.

If you have any concerns or seek further advice you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office. The ICO is an independent body set up to uphold information rights in the UK. They can be contacted through their website: www.ico.org.uk, their helpline on 0303 123 1113, or in writing to:

Information Commissioner’s Office,

Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

Changes to this privacy notice

We will continually review and update this privacy notice to reflect changes in our services and feedback from service users, as well as to comply with changes in the law.

This privacy statement was last updated in May 2020.