Privacy notices

Personal information

Personal information is any information that can be used to identify a living person, either directly or indirectly. This may include obvious information, such as name and address, or less obvious information, such as IP address or NHS number.

We get personal information from different places, such as when you:

open an account or use any of our services
use our website
communicate with us
contact us

The personal information we collect

We only collect your personal information from you or from other sources when we have a clear and lawful reason and purpose for doing so.

When we handle and use your personal information, we adhere to the data protection principles outlined in the London Borough of Barnet (LBB) data protection policy.

Types of personal information we collect:

identity (name, date of birth, gender, passport, national insurance number, family details)
contact (address, email address, telephone numbers)
technical (IP address)
social data (lifestyle, housing needs)
education (student and pupil records)
commercial services data (services used)
financial (bank account, payment card, transaction data, salary, benefits)
staff records (pensions, appraisals, nationality)
visual images, personal appearance and behaviour
business activities (employment, licences, and permits held)
case file information

We may collect some special or sensitive data from you, when we have a legal reason to do so. This data may include:

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

We must take extra care when collecting and using these types of information.

Our legal basis for using your personal information

We use your personal information only when we have a valid reason or ‘legal basis’ to do so. Usually, our legal basis is that we need to provide a service by law. This is called a statutory duty.

The legal reasons for using personal information are:

to fulfil our statutory and contractual obligations
to provide health or social care services with your consent
to use your public or legal information for legitimate purposes
to protect you, others, or the public interest in various situations
to conduct archiving, research, or statistical activities

Why we need your personal information

We use your personal information for the following reasons:

to provide and support services that meet your needs. For example, we use your data to process your benefit claim, if you apply for one.
so we can communicate with you. For example, you will get information about our services if you subscribe to our newsletters.
to protect and help people in our borough (safeguarding)
to ensure that we use public money wisely by managing and improving our services and budget
to monitor and handle your requests and complaints
so that we comply with legal obligations and duties such as licensing or premises, planning enforcement, and council tax
to detect and prevent crime. For example, by investigating fraud against the council or working with the police
to process financial transactions related to grants, payments and benefits involving the council or other government bodies such as the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
for statistical and research analysis
to promote the services we provide
to provide leisure and cultural services

How we use automated processing or profiling

Sometimes we use:

automated decision making (making a decision by a computer without a person)
profiling (using a computer to analyse your personal data)

If we do this, we must notify you and give you the opportunity to request a review of the decision or to challenge it. We rarely use automated processing or profiling. If we do, we will explain why in the privacy statement for the service.

You can find out more about your rights on the Information Commissioner's Office website.

Who we share information with

Your privacy is respected and we do not sell your personal information. We only share your information with those who work with us pursuant to a legal agreement or contract. We may, for instance, share your information with council services or other organisations with a legal basis for using it.

We may share your information with:

government bodies such as His Majesty's Revenue and Customs, Department for Work and Pensions, police etc
family members, associates, or representatives of the data subject
current, former, or prospective employers
healthcare, social service, and welfare organisations
examining bodies and educators
financial institutions and debt collection agencies
private detectives and security firms
suppliers of goods and services
Ombudsman, regulatory authorities, tribunals and courts
trade unions and professional organisations
credit reference agencies and political organisations
survey and research organisations
non-home office police forces and police complaints authority
voluntary and charitable organisations
religious institutions
students and their relatives, guardians, carers, or representatives
partner agencies that provide housing services and social care
companies that work on our behalf, such as Capita
We are a commissioning council that works with partners like health service and private companies to provide the best and most cost effective service.

We do not disclose your personal information to third parties for marketing, sales, or other commercial purposes without your prior explicit consent. We only share information with these organisations when the law allows or requires us to. We also make sure they follow the law, including data protection laws, and we check their systems and procedures before sharing information to protect your information.

How we use your personal information

We use your personal information for different purposes depending on the service you need from us. We also use it for some things that apply to all our services, such as:

Improving our services: We check how well we're doing using your data and feedback. We also plan how to improve our services based on this.
Sharing your compliments: We like to thank our staff and promote our projects and services with your comments. We'll always remove your personal details before we do this.
Sending information to other organisations: Sometimes the law says we must give your information to other organisations, such as the Department of Education. We also publish some information on public registers.
Checking and updating your information: We regularly check the information we have about you with different council services and other organisations, such as another council. This helps us to keep your information accurate, prevent and detect fraud, protect public money and meet our legal obligations. We may also share your information with other organisations for these reasons.
Preventing and detecting crime: We use your information across all our services to prevent and detect crime and fraud. The law allows us to do this. You can read more about this in our privacy notice for anti-fraud.
Protecting people: We have a legal duty to safeguard children and vulnerable adults. We also care about the wellbeing of our residents and clients. This means we may use your information and share it with organisations like the police, health and social care services to protect you or others. We do this for all our services.
Protecting our staff: We must record and report any incidents of work related violence and abuse against our staff or those working for us. We keep these incidents on a Potentially Violent Persons Register (PVPR).
Responding to information requests: We must answer requests for information that we hold under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Environmental Information Regulations 2004 and data protection legislation. All our services use your information to do this.
Handling complaints: We use your information to deal with any complaints you or someone else makes to us. Sometimes we do this for legal reasons, such as enforcing planning law or environmental health.
Collecting equalities information: Sometimes we need information about your characteristics, such as your disability, to provide you with a service to support you. For example, our social care teams need this information to assess your needs. We also collect this information to monitor how well we meet the needs of different groups of people.

How long we keep your personal data

We'll only keep your personal data for as long as we need to. To decide how long we must keep your information, we follow our retention schedule.

You can find more details in the privacy notice for each service about how long we store your data before we get rid of it securely.

My Account

My Account is how you register with the council’s website to access information, such as your Council Tax, and sign up to get notifications about different services. You may change your contact preferences at any time through your account settings.

You have rights under data protection laws to control what information you give us and what we do with it.

SMS text messaging and e-newsletters

We may send you text messages from time to time if you give us your phone number. These messages will be about things that might interest you, such as your Council Tax payments.

You can also sign up to get our e newsletters by email. They'll tell you about our latest activities, events and library services.

You can unsubscribe from our e newsletters at any time by clicking the link in the email.

Your rights

You (data subjects) have rights under data protection laws to control what information you provide to us and what we can do with it. More details on your full rights under data protection law can be found on ICO website.

How we tell you about your data

We must tell you:

what data we use about you
why we use it
how long we keep it
who we share it with

This notice is part of how we do that. You can also see how we use your data for each of our services by looking at our privacy notices for specific services.

You can ask for access to the information we hold on you

You can ask for the information we have about you. This is called a Subject Access Request.

We usually share your information with you when we assess your needs or deliver services to you.

You also have the right to ask for information we hold about you and the services you receive from us. We must give you everything we have recorded about you, unless it:

has confidential information about other people
could seriously harm your mental or physical health
could stop us from preventing or detecting crime or collecting tax

Requests are free and we must reply within 30 days, unless your request is large or complicated. Then we can take longer, but we'll tell you why.

If you cannot write to us, we'll help you make your request.

Make a Subject Access Request for the information we have about you.

How to get your data in a commonly accessible format

You have the right to request that your personal information be given back to you or another service provider of your choice in a commonly accessible format.

This is called ‘data portability’, but it only applies if:

you gave us the data directly
we use your data with your consent (not if the law says we must)
a computer made the decisions (not a human)

It is likely that data portability will not apply to most of the services you receive from the council.

How to change or delete your data

If you believe that information we hold about you is wrong, you can ask us to change it. This might be if we have spelled your name wrong or have an incorrect address. You should speak to the council department who is delivering the service to you to let them know you think something is wrong.

We may not be able to change or remove everything, but we will correct any errors and add your comments to show that you disagree with something.

Where we have shared your personal information with others, we’ll do what we can to tell them to correct the information.

You can ask us to delete your data if:

we don't need it anymore
you withdraw your permission for us to use it
there is no legal reason for us to use it
the law says we must delete it

We may not be able to delete everything, for example, if we need it for a legal reason or to deliver a service to you. But we'll tell you why.

We'll also try to make sure that anyone else who has your data deletes it.

How to limit or stop our use of your data

You can ask us to limit or stop using your data in some situations, such as:

you think your data is inaccurate and we're checking it
we used your data unlawfully and you don't want us to delete it
we don't need your data anymore but you need it for a legal claim
you object to us using your data and we're deciding if we should stop

We'll try to do what you ask, but we may have to keep or use your data if the law says we must.

How to object to our use of your data

You can object to us using your data for direct marketing. You can also object if we use your data for:

the public interest
our public task
our legitimate interests

We may still use your data if the law allows us to. We'll tell you why in our reply.

If you have questions

The London Borough of Barnet is required to appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO), who is responsible for monitoring our compliance with data protection legislation and advising on our data protection obligations.

If you have any questions or worries about how the council collects or uses your personal information you can email the Data Protection Officer at data.protection@barnet.gov.uk

For independent advice about data protection and privacy, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO oversees how organisations comply with data protection legislation in the UK.

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Tel: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745 if you prefer to use a national rate number.

Alternatively, visit the ICO website or email ICO.

Privacy notices for specific services

Visitors to our websites

When someone visits our website we collect routine internet log information, which allows us to see visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to determine which pages are being viewed as this assists us in improving our website.

Internet log information is collected in a way which doesn’t allow us to identify you and we do not make any attempts to find out the identities of individuals visiting our site.

Ask Barnet Chatbot

The web chatbot will not request any personal data as it will only answer general queries. Engaging with the chatbot is entirely voluntary, as is the provision of any information. Users are asked not to share anything personally identifying.

We do collect routine internet log information, including IP address, which allows us to see behaviour patterns with our web chat and monitor performance. This assists us in improving our website as well as the quality of the advice provided by the chatbot. See our Website Cookies statement for more details.

Chat data goes through an anonymisation process every 24 hours which will remove any personal data inadvertently supplied which follows a recognisable pattern as well as the IP address. Redacted transcripts will then be kept for 6 months and will be used for insight and chatbot improvement. Any chat which connects someone with a customer service advisor is covered by our Customer Contact Centre privacy notice.

Website Cookies

Our use of cookies is detailed on our Cookies page.

Computer viruses

We make every effort to ensure all information is virus checked before it is uploaded and made available on our website. The council cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage which may occur from use of downloaded documents, it is the responsibility of users to re-check all downloaded documents with their own virus check software.

External links

This website contains external links to third party sites. Our privacy policy applies only to information collected by or on behalf of the London Borough of Barnet. When you are transferring to another site you should read their privacy statement on the use of your information before submitting any personal details.

Updating this privacy notice

We will update this privacy notice when how we collect and use your information changes. We encourage you to check this privacy notice before providing us with any personal information.