Privacy notice - Democratic Services

We provide services that directly support and facilitate the democratic functions of the council to support our residents, elected councillors, and partner organisations that include the production of documents for Council, Cabinet, Committees and other meetings together with providing procedural advice at meetings to ensure compliance with the Council's Constitution.  We also provide a service for school appeals, including the appointment of independent school appeal panel members.

In order to provide this service, we may need to process some or all of the following categories of personal information about members of the public, consultants, elected members:

• Names
• Addresses
• Contact details (e-mail addresses and telephone numbers)
• Date of birth
• For senior officer recruitment - education and employment history
• Evidence to support individual applications/appeals could include personal sensitive data
• Financial information
• Consultation responses
• Councillor information - political affiliation, meeting attendance, training records

We collect information in the following ways:

• Direct communication (either by telephone, in person, email or in writing)
• Standard forms
• Website (e-petitions)
• To receive and respond to public questions via the Council website

We will process personal data in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) 2016 and the Data Protection Act 2018 as follows:

• Processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject;
• Processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller.

The laws which allow us to process your personal information are:

• Education Act 1996
• Employment Rights Act 1996
• Equality Act 2010
• Local Government Act 1972
• Local Government and Housing Act 1989
• Localism Act 2011
• Openness of Local Government Regulations 2014
• School Standards and Framework Act 1998

We will collect enough personal information in order to provide you with services for the following purposes:

• To process school appeals for your child through an Independent Panel
• To process exclusion reviews for your child through an Independent Panel
• To process and respond to petitions
• To process home to school transport appeals through the necessary Board
• To manage the decision making process through appropriate Committees, Boards and Panels in accordance with the functions of the Council
• Publishes agendas and minutes for all Council meetings
• Audio calling for decision making meetings
• To appoint senior officer to positions
• Filming and streaming of council meetings for public viewing on Social media sites

Where there is a business need, your personal information may be shared with following organisations and/or individuals where the law allows us to do so:

• Council departments
• Council members
• Other local authorities
• Statutory bodies
• Members of the public

Any personal data that we capture is stored on encrypted devices such as cameras or laptops. This is transferred to a secure Council system for longer-term storage. All access to personal data is controlled with user accounts and access levels. All of our staff complete mandatory training to ensure that they understand their responsibilities, how to keep data safe, and what it can and cannot be used for.

We will keep your information for as long as it is required by the Council in order to comply with legal and regulatory requirements. Minutes of Council meetings are required by law to be kept for 6 years and background papers for 4 years.

Most of the personal data that we use is not transferred outside of the European Economic Area. Where we use social media applications and websites, this data is sometimes transferred overseas. We make sure that organisations that store this data for us keep it safe either by having a contract agreement with them or only using companies that comply with approved legal frameworks such as the ‘EU-US Privacy Shield’.

At no time will your information be used by the Council or be passed to organisations external to us and our partners for marketing or sales purposes.

Your Information Rights are set out in law and, subject to some exceptions, you have the:

• Right to rectification - to ask for information to be corrected
• Right to erasure - to have your personal data deleted
• Right to object - to how your data is used
• Right to restriction - to request limits on how your data is used
• Right to portability - to request that we move your data to another organisation
• Right of subject access - to request a copy of data the Council holds about you

If you have a concerns about the way we are collecting or using your personal data, you should raise your concern with us in the first instance or directly to the Information Commissioner's Office. Visit the website of the Information Commissioner's Office.

If you would like to discuss anything in this privacy notice or your information rights, please contact:

The Data Protection Officer
Middlesbrough Council
PO Box 500, Middlesbrough, TS1 9FT
Phone: 01642 245432
Email: dataprotection@middlesbrough.gov.uk