Privacy notice: Environmental Sustainability

1. Introduction

This notice provides additional privacy information regarding the use of data in the Environmental Sustainability Service of South Tyneside Council.

We will keep our privacy notice under regular review and will advise you of any updates on our website.

This Notice was last reviewed in June of 2022

2. Who we are

For the purposes of Data Protection legislation, South Tyneside Council is the Data Controller.

3. What type of personal information do we collect?

We may collect the following types of personal information:

Name
Address
Telephone number
Email address

4. How do we collect personal information?

We may collect your personal information in a number of ways, for example:

In person
In writing - for example letter or email
Telephone calls
Online forms
Referrals from another department
Family members acting on your behalf
Solicitors or insurance companies acting on your behalf

5. Why do we collect your personal information?

The Freedom of Information Act and Environmental Information Regulations require us to collect a name for every request. We also need contact details in order to respond to each request such as an email address or home address.

We may also need to collect personal inforzmation to allow for us to carry out risk mitigation measures and for the maintenance of any physical measures put in place such as flood doors or flood gates such as in the case of a product recall or fault.

Furthermore, we may need to keep addresses to comply with our statutory duties under the Land Drainage Act 1991 and the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 in relation to the prevention of flooding.

6. Who might we share your personal information with?

We will not share your personal information with any other third parties unless you have specifically asked us to, or if we have a legal obligation to do so, besides in the case where you have authorised the undertaking of works on your property or home where we may share your details with a third-party contractor. This is so that the carrying out of the works can be arranged and completed.

7. How long will we keep your personal information?

We will hold your personal information relating to Freedom of Information Requests, Environmental Information Requests, Subject Access Requests and Enquiries for 3 years. At the end of this period, it will be deleted unless there is any special reason for keeping it.

We will also hold your information relating to any risk mitigation schemes carried out on your property of home for the period of time that the scheme is being carried out. After this time, the data will be anonymised, only keeping the address that the scheme was carried out on. This data will be kept for the expected lifetime of the project for the notification of any product recalls or safety concerns. After this time period, your data will be securely deleted.

8. What is our legal basis for using your personal information?

To use your personal information there must be a lawful basis to do this, such as, through a contract, performing a public task or where there is a legal obligation.

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the lawful bases we rely on for processing this information are:

(a) Your consent. You are able to remove your consent at any time. You can do this by contacting data.protection@southtyneside.gov.uk
(b) We have a contractual obligation.
(c) We have a legal obligation.
(d) We have a vital interest.
(e) We need it to perform a public task.
(f) We have a legitimate interest.

9. How do we keep your personal information secure?

All information provided will be stored securely on our network. Access to this information only held by those in the environmental sustainability service and system administrators.

10. Is your personal information used overseas?

We will not process your personal information outside of the United Kingdom.

11. What are your rights?

Your individual rights are set out in law. Subject to some legal exemptions, you have the following rights:

Right to be informed
Right of access
Right to rectification
Right to erasure
Right to restrict processing
Right to data portability
Right to object
Rights in relating to automated decision making and profiling

12. Contact us

If you would like to exercise your rights in relation to your personal information, or you feel that something has gone wrong with your personal information, you can contact us in either of the following ways:

By email: data.protection@southtyneside.gov.uk
By telephone: 0191 424 6539
In writing:
South Tyneside Council,
Information Governance,
Town Hall and Civic Offices,
South Shields
NE33 2RL

If you feel that the Council has not handled your information correctly you can contact the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). The ICO is the Government's Independent Body responsible for overseeing data protection. In most cases the ICO will only review cases that have exhausted the Council's internal procedures.

The ICO's contact details are as follows: Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, SK9 5AF. More information can be found on the ICO's website at www.ico.org.uk.