Privacy policy - Chelmsford City Council

Your privacy is very important to Chelmsford City Council, as it is to you. We are committed to respecting and protecting your privacy when you interact with us and use our services and venues. We want you to feel confident that we are serious about any concerns surrounding the security and safeguarding of your personal information (data).

This policy is about what we are doing with your personal data and our promises to you.

It will explain:

Who we are
How and why we collect it
How we will use it
How we will store it
Who we will share it with
How you can access and control it
Any other rights you have

We may amend this policy at any time to ensure that we are keeping up to date with the latest legislation.

We promise to act in accordance with the rules set out in the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in how we gather and use your personal information.

When you see “we”, “us”, “our” or “the Council” this means Chelmsford City Council.

1. Who we are

Chelmsford City Council is a legal body responsible for certain services that the Government requires us to provide (statutory services), as well as optional services designed to cater for local needs (discretionary services).

The Council maintains a balance between essential services and other services that local people want, using Government funding and other income sourced from grants and through providing services to the public.

We provide online information about our services and venues through various websites, social media accounts and apps owned and/or operated by us.

Our registered address is Civic Centre, Duke Street, Chelmsford, Essex, CM1 1JE.

2. Personal information that we collect about you

Chelmsford City Council collects information about you in various ways.

If you are a parent or guardian of a child who is under 13 years old, we may process limited personal information about you so that you can give consent for the child to access some of our services and venues. We may use your contact details to communicate to you on their behalf.

2.1 Information you provide to us:

Register, apply and/or pay for a statutory and/or discretionary product, goods and/or service provided by us;
Enter into an agreement or contract with us, where you supply us, or we supply you, with a product, goods and/or service;
Contact us to request assistance, provide feedback, make a comment and/or complaint.

The amount and type of information that we collect, as well how long we hold it for, depends on the type of product, good or service.

2.2 Information we collect about you:

When you visit our website(s) we may collect information about your computer. This includes your IP address (a set of numbers that identifies each computer or other network device using the internet), information about your visit and how you used the website (such how you landed on our website, the individual pages you visited, the order in which you visited the pages, how long you were on each page and if you used the search function). You can read more about this in our Cookie Policy.

When you visit and use our venues including Leisure Centres (Riverside Leisure, Chelmsford Sport and Athletics Centre, South Woodham Ferrers Leisure Centre and Dovedale Sports Centre), Civic and Cramphorn Theatres, Oaklands Museum, Sandford Mill, Hylands Estate and Parks, we may also capture some information. The amount and type of information we hold on you in our booking and ticketing systems depends on what activities and services you have requested from us, but may include name, address, date of birth, home/mobile/work telephone numbers, email addresses, medical conditions (particularly for sports lessons, courses and use of gym and fitness facilities), and bank details (such as for direct debit payments).

When you complete any contact forms requesting assistance or a service, you might be asked to provide contact information as well as details on any issues, problems or the type of help you need. The amount of information required will be dependent on the service you require.

When you complete any consultation, such as online or printed surveys or feedback forms, the data from your responses may be used for analysis and research purposes. This includes the use of geo-demographic information (such as your postcode, gender and age).

2.3 Information we receive from others about you:

We may receive information about you from other organisations or agencies that we work with. This includes partner organisations, government bodies and service providers. This may be combined with other information you provided us with, to help improve our service to you.

3. Using your personal information

3.1 To action your requests or contact you

The Council is legally allowed to contact you, even if you do not provide us with permission for marketing purposes, if it is about:

a statutory or legal service (such as Council Tax, benefits and housing);
an agreement, contract or licence (including leisure memberships, environmental permits, parking permits, alcohol licensing, vehicle licensing and animal licensing);
a booking (such as an activity, course, seminar, show or event);
an application (such as pest control, planning control, building control or employment);
any correspondence (such as letter, form, email or web form) or contact (such as call, voicemail, text and online content or message) we receive from you or any comment or complaint you make about the Council’s services;
or other services that you or your child (if under 16 years old) have asked us to provide you with.

When we do so, it will be in accordance to this policy and the legislation previously mentioned.

3.2 For marketing purposes

We don’t want to lose our ability to contact you for marketing purposes, however you have the right to tell us:

How you want to be contacted
What you want to be contacted about
That you have removed your permission for us to contact you

Don’t forget you can change your mind at any time.

There are lots of good reasons for giving us permission to contact you.

By telling us exactly what you are interested in (such as Sports, Museums, Theatre, Hylands Estate, Events, Recycling and Elections), we can tailor our information to make it relevant to you. We understand everyone is busy and not always aware of what’s going on, so we would love to be able to keep you updated.
By giving us your permission, we can contact you when we are making changes or improvements to our pricing, programming (activities, courses, workshops, shows and/or events) and services on offer; when we have exciting news and of course when we have special offers, promotions and discounts to save you money!
We may also invite you to get involved in surveys or consultation opportunities to help us shape our services for the future.

In addition, we may use your information to help improve our communication and services that we provide.

Information gathered when you use our website(s) helps us make improvements to the navigation (how you move through the website) and content (information on the pages), so that you can easily find the right information whether you visit us online using a desktop PC, laptop, tablet or mobile phone.
Information gathered when you use our social media site(s) such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, help us to understand whether our posts are engaging and of interest to you, and to ensure we are effective in targeting the right messages to the right people.
Information gathered when you receive our email newsletters around email opening and clicks, using industry standard technologies to help us monitor and improve its performance.

4. Sharing your personal information

We will never sell your data, however we may share some of your personal information with third parties, for the following reasons:

To help prevent fraud, we may share your information with Government departments and schemes (such as Department for Work and Pensions, HM Revenue and Customs and the National Fraud Initiative); as well as credit reference agencies and other companies for use in credit decisions. These searches may be recorded by credit agencies but will not affect your credit standing.
To pursue people or companies who owe us money, we may share your information with debt collection agencies.
Business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors in the process of delivering any contract we enter with them or you.
If we are required to obtain additional professional or legal advice on a matter relating to you.
Analytics and search engine providers that assist us to improve and optimise the performance of our websites and social media accounts. The information provided for this would in an aggregated and anonymised statistical format where an individual cannot not be personally identified.
To determine whether a grant or funding from a Government or other local, regional or national organisation (such as Sport England and National/Heritage Lottery Fund) has been successful in achieving its targets and goals. The information provided for this would in an aggregated and anonymised statistical format where an individual cannot not be personally identified.

5. Storing your personal information

We will take all reasonable steps to ensure we keep your details safe, secure and used in accordance to this policy. We will use strict procedures and security features to prevent unauthorised access to your information.

While we will do our best to protect your personal information, there may be a situation that happens outside of our control that may affect you based on access to your data. We promise to act promptly and in accordance with the rules set out in the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to ensure any impact on you is minimised.

6. Your Rights

6.1 To see what information we hold on you

You have the right to access personal information held about you by us. Any access requests are free of charge.

If the information we hold about you is inaccurate you have a right to have this corrected and you have the right to request completion of incomplete data.

You have the right to request the erasure of your personal data in certain circumstances (‘right to be forgotten’).

You have the right to request that we stop, or restrict the processing of your personal data, in certain circumstances. Where possible we will seek to comply with your request, but we may be required to hold or process information to comply with a legal requirement.

You can make any of these requests by emailing ir@chelmsford.gov.uk

If you are dissatisfied with how the council have used your personal information you have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at casework@ico.org.uk

6.2 For marketing purposes

You have the right to change your mind about what you are interested in and we want to make this as easy as possible for you to do. The exception to this is explained in section 3.1.

You can control how and what we contact you about for marketing purposes by using the forms on www.chelmsford.gov.uk/mychelmsford or by clicking the unsubscribe button on our e-newsletters. The forms held here allow you to sign up to receive e-marketing, change your mind about what you are interested in (by changing your preferences), or even remove your permission completely (unsubscribe).

Each person, including children (under 13 years old), needs to have a separate sign up to form completed as the information sent out (such as through electronic newsletters or emails) will be tailored to that person. However, a parent or guardian can use their own email address when completing a child's form so that they receive the information on their behalf.

Please remember that we would never contact you to ask for any login details or account passwords. Please do not give out this information if you receive any emails or calls from someone saying they are from the Council and asking for it.

If you have any concerns that any of your accounts have been compromised (such as someone finding your password), please get in touch with us straight away. Do not provide us with your password – we will only require your name for us to reset your account.

Data Protection Officer

Our designated Data Protection Officer is John Breen. You can contact him by emailing ir@chelmsford.gov.uk

Additional rights

Our websites and social media accounts may, from time to time, include links to and from websites or social media accounts owned and operated by our partner, funding or accreditation organisations. If you choose to follow one of these links, you need to be aware that they have their own privacy and/or cookie policies and we do not accept any liability or responsibility for these. We encourage you to check their policies carefully before you choose to use them. If you choose to submit any of your personal information to them, you do so at your own risk.

Our website uses cookies to help distinguish you from other users of our website. These cookies help us to provide you with an easier and more enjoyable online experience when you visit us. They give us information on how you are using our website, such as the pages you are visiting and how long you are spending on them. This is important to us as it allows us to make improvements (such as adding more relevant information on pages people are having problems with) and to tailor the information that you see and use based on your viewing history. You can adjust the settings on your browser to prevent cookies from accessing your data, but in choosing to do some of the services and functions on our websites may not work properly.

Privacy Notices for our range of services

Our different services collect, process and share information in different ways. You can view a list of all our Privacy Notices. You can also view our cookie policy.