Privacy notice

How we use your information

Lewes District Council and Eastbourne Borough Council are Data Controllers. We collect and process personal information about you in order to provide public services. This privacy notice explains how we use and share your information.

Why do we collect information about you?

We need to collect personal information in order to:

Deliver the service you requested
Allow us to undertake statutory functions and meet legal obligations
Confirm your identity to provide some services
Contact you by post, email or telephone
Understand your needs to provide the services that you request
Update your customer record
Prevent and detect fraud and corruption in the use of public funds
Where you have agreed to this, for the purpose of consulting, informing and gauging your opinion about our services
Where necessary to protect individuals from harm or injury

We will only process personal information about you if one of the conditions below applies:

You have given your consent
For the performance of a contract with you
If there is a legal obligation
If it is for a task carried out in the public interest
If it is in your vital interests
Or, in certain circumstances, if it is in our legitimate interest to do so

The personal data we collect may include:

Identity data - name, title, date of birth, marital status, gender and unique identifiers (such as your National Insurance number)
Contact data - home or business address, email address and contact telephone numbers
Financial data - financial and payment information such as your bank account details
Communications data - this includes your preferences in how you like to receive information and communications from us, for example, whether you wish to receive information about other services we provide

Information sharing

We are working to make our record keeping more efficient to be able to provide relevant services more quickly across Lewes and Eastbourne. Your customer record may comprise of your name, address, date of birth, gender, contact details (telephone/email), information which can be used to confirm your identity, a brief summary of your contact with the council, an indicator of the services used, and a customer reference number.

We may need to pass your information to other people and organisations that provide a service on our behalf. These providers are obliged to keep your details securely and in line with data protection laws and use them only to fulfil your request.

We may disclose information to third parties where it is necessary, either to comply with a legal obligation, or where permitted under data protection laws.

Where we need to disclose sensitive information such as medical details to a third party, we will do so once we have obtained your explicit consent, or where we are legally required to. We may disclose information when necessary to prevent risk of harm to an individual.

At no time will your information be used for marketing or sales purposes without your prior explicit consent.

Your data will not be sent or stored abroad.

Further service specific information can be found under the 'Privacy notices for our range of services' tab below.

Detect and prevent fraud and crime

The councils are required by law to protect the public funds they administer. We may use any of the information you provide to us for the prevention and detection of fraud. We may also share information with other bodies that are responsible for auditing or administering public funds, including the Cabinet Office.

The Cabinet Office requires councils to participate in data matching exercises to assist in the prevention and detection of fraud. Councils are required to provide particular sets of data to the Cabinet Office for this purpose and cannot refuse to hand over this data.

Email

If you email us we may keep a record of your contact and your email address and the email for our record of the transaction. We recommend that you keep the amount of confidential information you send to us via email to a minimum and use our secure online services instead.

Using our website

If you are a user with general public access our website does not store or capture personal information, but merely logs a number called your IP address which is automatically recognised by the system.

The system will record personal information if you:

Subscribe to or apply for services that require personal information
Report a fault and give your contact details for us to respond
Contact us and leave your details for us to respond

We employ cookies to help log visitors to our website. A cookie is a small plain text file and is temporarily located in the browser directory on your computer. You can reject the use of cookies, or delete existing cookies but this may affect how the site functions and prevent the use of some websites. By rejecting/deleting cookies the next time you visit the website will treat you as a new user and you may be asked to provide information that you have previously submitted.

We use live chat software on our website. This is provided by ICS.AI, a 3rd party UK based Software Company. Information regarding how the data is processed and stored is available to download at the bottom of this page.

Links to other websites

This privacy notice does not cover the links within this site to other websites. We encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit.

CCTV

We have installed CCTV systems in some of our premises and outside locations used by members of the public, for the purposes of public and staff safety and crime prevention and detection. In all locations, signs are displayed notifying you that CCTV is in operation and providing details of who to contact for further information.

We will only disclose CCTV images to others who intend to use the images for the purposes stated above. Images captured by CCTV will not be kept for longer than necessary. However, on occasion there may be a need to keep images for longer, such as where a crime is being investigated.

How we protect your information

Our aim is not to be intrusive and we will not ask irrelevant or unnecessary questions. The information you provide will be subject to measures and procedures to make sure it cannot be seen, accessed or disclosed to anyone who should not see it.

We have information governance policies that define our commitments and responsibilities to your privacy. We provide training to staff that handle personal information and may treat it as a disciplinary matter if they misuse or do not look after your personal information properly.

We will not keep your information longer than it is needed for, or where the law states how long it should be kept. We do this in line with the Local Government Association retention guidelines. We will dispose of paper records, or delete electronic personal information in a secure way.

Your rights

You are entitled to request a copy of any information about you that we hold. These requests can be made verbally or in writing.

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 have the right to object to the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances. We may still be required to hold or process information if there are legitimate grounds for doing so.

We may not be able to provide the service you have requested without your personal data.

We will not make decisions about you based on automated processing.

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

Data Protection Officer

Our designated Data Protection Officer is Oliver Dixon, Senior Lawyer.

Contact Details: Email: accesstoinformation@lewes-eastbourne.gov.uk

Download privacy notices for our range of services

You can download our privacy notices for our range of services below.

If you are a social housing tenant you can find out about the data we collect for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and their privacy notice here: