This page covers:
One of your rights under EU law is that you must be informed when your personal data - also known as personal information - is processed (collected, used, stored) by any organisation. You also have the right to know the details and purpose of that processing.
Some of the services offered on our website require the processing of your personal data. In such cases, links are available on those pages directing you to the specific information about the processing contained in the relevant data protection notices.
Here we give you a general overview of some of the ways this website processes your personal data including the use of cookies and social media.
Personal data is any data that identifies or relates to a living individual. Identification can be through the information alone or in conjunction with any other information in the Council’s possession or likely to come into its possession. The processing of personal data is governed by The Data Protection Act (DPA) 2018 and UK GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and the principles set out in them.
Cookies are short text files stored on a user’s device (such as a computer, tablet or phone) by a website.
Cookies are used for the technical functioning of a website or for gathering statistics.
Cookies are also typically used to provide a more personalised experience for a user for example, when an online service remembers your user profile without you having to login.
When you visit our website, we may collect some data on your browsing experience such as your IP address, the website page you visited, when you visited and the website page you were redirected from.
This information is used to gather aggregated and anonymous statistics with a view to improving our services and to enhance your user experience.
When you visit this website, we will keep the browser history of your visit for a maximum of 13 months. This information will then be deleted.
Should you wish to opt your data out of our anonymised, aggregated statistics, you can do so by clearing your cookies in your browser.
Read our cookies information for more information about the types of cookies this website uses.
We use Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses “cookies”, which are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyse how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States.
In case of activation of the IP anonymization, Google will truncate/anonymize the last octet of the IP address for Member States of the European Union as well as for other parties to the Agreement on the European Economic Area. Only in exceptional cases, the full IP address is sent to and shortened by Google servers in the USA.
On behalf of the website provider Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage to the website provider. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google.
You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. However, we points out that if you do this, you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website.
We use Hotjar in order to better understand our users’ needs and to optimize the service and experience when using our website.
Hotjar is a technology service that helps us better understand our users’ experience (for example, how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and don’t like, etc.) and this enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback.
Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users’ behaviour and their devices. This includes a device's IP address (processed during your session and stored in a de-identified form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), and the preferred language used to display our website. Hotjar stores this information on our behalf in a pseudonymized user profile. Hotjar is contractually forbidden to sell any of the data collected on our behalf.
For further details, please see the ‘about Hotjar’ section of Hotjar’s support site.
We use social media to present our work through widely used and contemporary channels.
Our use of social media is highlighted on this website.
For instance, you can watch videos, which we upload to our YouTube page and follow links from our website to Google, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Cookies are not set by our display of social media buttons to connect to those services when our website pages are loaded on your computer (or other devices) or from components from those services embedded in our web pages.
Each social media channel has their own policy on the way they process your personal data when you access their sites. For example, if you choose to watch one of our videos on YouTube, you will be asked for explicit consent to accept YouTube cookies; if you look at our Twitter activity on Twitter, you will be asked for explicit consent to accept Twitter cookies; the same applies for Google, Facebook and LinkedIn.
If you have any concerns or questions about their use of your personal data, you should read their privacy policies carefully before using them.
We process the personal data submitted by website visitors. This will include names, contact details as well as the content of the allegations (insofar as the latter qualify as personal data).
The case file containing your personal data is accessible to relevant members of our staff. All access to case files is logged.
You are entitled to access the personal data we holds about you and to have them rectified where necessary. In certain cases, you also have the right to have your data blocked or erased or to object to their processing. For more information, please see Articles 13 to 19 of the Regulation.
To exercise any of these rights, please contact us using our contact form. We will reply within three months. Please note that in some cases restrictions under Article 20 of the Regulation may apply.
We keep log files - including your personal data - for up to two years.
You can contact us as follows:
Do not track is a function that allows visitors to opt out from being tracked by websites for any purpose including the use of analytics services, advertising networks and social platforms. Do not track options are available in a number of browsers including:
If you enable do not track in your web browser, Google Analytics will respect your choice. You will not be tracked. This is in addition to you opting-out of the aggregation and analysis of data for our website statistics.
If you have disabled all cookies from your browser, we will still collect some general data about your browsing (e.g. a record of a visitor to our website) but they will be less accurate and your visit will not be tracked.