Privacy notice - Consultations

In order to conduct consultations we may need to process your personal and special category information which could include:

• Contact details such as name, address, number, and email address (if requested)
• Age or date of birth
• Gender
• Comments you have made in relation to consultation
• Nationality or spoken languages
• Health information
• Equalities information such as ethnicity, religion, sexuality, disability
• Technical Device Information i.e. location, IP addresses and cookies data (if requested)

We may collect your Personal Data in a number of ways, for example:

• When you register with us for consultation alerts    
• When you contact us via telephone, letter, or email
• When you submit a representation or comment on a consultation document
• When you use contact or respond to us online

We will process your personal and ‘special category’ data in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Data Protection Act 2018 as follows:

When relying on consent as the lawful basis for an online consultation if you are under the age of 13 we are required to seek consent from your parent/guardian who has parental responsibility.

Where the Council runs a competition to encourage participation in a consultation, if you wish to join the competition we will seek your separate consent to use your information for this purpose.

Where personal data is collected it will be used for the purposes of consulting with you to monitor and improve our services, through obtaining feedback from individuals using our services or where you wish to be entered into a competition which is being run to encourage consultation participation.

We may share your personal data and feedback with services within the Council who are responsible for carrying out analysis of consultation responses. We might also share you data with other authorities, law enforcement, and third-party organisations where the law allows us to.

Under the General Data Protection Regulations (EU) 2016 (GDPR) we have a legal duty to protect any information that we hold about you. We take measures to safeguard your data and implement security standards and controls to prevent any unauthorised access to it.

We will hold your personal information for up to 6 years following the closure of a consultation.

The Council will only process your information overseas where it uses a contractor that has provided appropriate security guarantees, if requested by an external organisation under a legal requirement, or at your request.

We will only use your information and share it with our partner organisations for marketing purposes where you have given your consent or where you have received a similar product or service from us in the past.

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