When you contact us
This privacy notice explains what information the council collects when you contact us.
In order to respond to an enquiry or complaint, it may be necessary for the council to collect, store and process personal data relating to customers and service users.
Safeguards are in place to ensure that this data is kept secure and the privacy of individuals is protected.
This privacy notice should be read alongside the council’s main privacy notice.
- Who is responsible for your information?
- Purpose of processing
- Categories of personal data and lawful basis
- Data sharing
- Further information
Who is responsible for your information?
Chesterfield Borough Council is the data controller for the personal information collected.
You can make a complaint, comment, report or any other type of enquiry in person, over the phone or via the website (including online forms). If you do, we may need to collect some personal information about you. Depending on the nature of your enquiry, this may be so that we can respond to you, or it may be that we need information about you in order to resolve your issue or to investigate a problem.
If you visit some of our premises, for example the Town Hall, you may be asked to sign in. This information is required to maintain building security, and to provide some estimate of how many people were in building if there is an emergency.
We also collect equalities monitoring information in some situations. This information is processed separately to your enquiry in order to provide an overview of our services.
Updating our records and onward processing
Once your enquiry has been logged, it may form part of other processes with a different lawful basis – for example we are legally required to act on safeguarding concerns.
The personal information you provide may be used to update our records and may be shared across other council services.
Prevention and detection of crime and fraud
Information may also be used for the prevention or detection of crime and fraud, or the recovery of public funds. Some data matching may occur as part of the National Fraud Initiative. Please see the National Fraud Initiative privacy notice for more information.
Categories of personal data and lawful basis
In order to provide this service, we may need to process some or all of the following categories of personal information:
- contact details
- complaint/enquiry/ report details
- payment card details
- financial or tax information
- identifying information (eg National Insurance Number)
- potentially any other information required as part of your enquiry
Under data protection legislation, our lawful basis for using your personal data will be one of:
- it is required in order to carry out a public task (our statutory duty) or a legal obligation (eg enquiries about council tax)
- it forms part of the performance of a contract (eg when you book or pay for a service)
- it is required to carry out our legitimate interests (eg signing the visitors book)
- you have provided your consent
- it is necessary to protect your vital interests
You do not have to provide personal information when you make a complaint or an enquiry, but if you do not it may hamper our ability to investigate and/or communicate the outcome to you.
Where we collect special category data, our lawful basis for this processing usually be because it is for reasons of substantial public interest, or because you have provided your explicit consent.
Your information will be passed to the relevant team within the council. Depending on the type of enquiry, the responding team may go on to share your information with the following classes of recipients where there is a legal avenue to do so:
- other local authorities (including Derbyshire County Council)
- emergency services
- regulatory agencies
- partners that provide services on our behalf
- central government departments or executive agencies
- other relevant parties
If you choose to refer a complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman we will be required to share your personal information with them as part of their investigation. Please see our complaint webpages for more details of our complaint process.
Information in the visitors’ book may be shared with the Police or Emergency Services. This sharing is to aid the prevention and detection of crime, or to protect your vital interests in an emergency.
Basic contact information about visitors to our buildings may also be shared with NHS Test and Trace. Please see the COVID-19 privacy notice for more details.
Please get in touch if you would like more information about how the council processes your personal data:
- contact the council's data protection officer