Covid-19 Privacy Notice

Your Personal Data - Who we are

We are Preston City Council and your privacy is important to us. We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your personal information in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation.

If you have any concerns about how the Council is handling your personal data, these can be raised with the Council's Data Protection Officer:

Preston City Council
Lancaster Road
Preston
PR1 2RL

Email: info@preston.gov.uk

We keep our privacy notice under regular review and we will place an updated version on this page.

This will help ensure that you are always aware of what information we collect and how we use it.

What we need

We collect or obtain personal data about you which includes personal information such as:

• Name
• Address
• Telephone number(s)
• Email address
• Household composition
• Financial information
• Date of Birth
• Health and vulnerability data
• NHS number

Why we need it

The Council and its partner organisations are working closely together to provide the services people need as easily and quickly as possible during this Covid-19 outbreak.

The Department for Health and Social Care have asked organisations to support the NHS Test and Trace service by keeping a temporary record of our visitors for 21 days which will help control any local outbreaks.

The legal basis for processing your data is that it is in the public interest for us to deal with the outbreak of Covid-19.

The General Data Protection Regulation requires specific conditions to be met to ensure that the processing of personal data is lawful. These relevant conditions are:

• Where disclosure is in the vital interests of yourself or another person - Article 6(1)(d)
• Performance of a task carried out in the public interest - Article 6(1)(e)
• Processing is necessary to protect the vital interests of the data subject - Article 9(2)(c)
• Processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest - Article 9(2)(g)
• Processing is necessary for reasons of public interest in the area of public health - Article 9(2)(i)

What we do with it

In this current pandemic, we may share your personal data internally within our various departments and services as well as externally with other public authorities, emergency services, and other stakeholders, as is necessary and proportionate to do so.

In the event of a local Covid-19 outbreak, names and contact details of visitors to our sites may be provided to the NHS Test and Trace service.

We will only use your information in ways which are permitted by the General Data Protection Regulation and the current UK Data Protection law.

We have a Data Protection regime in place to oversee the effective and secure processing of your personal data.

More information on this framework can be found on our website under Data protection and freedom of information.

This authority has a duty to protect the public funds it administers, and may use information held about you for all lawful purposes, including but not limited to the prevention and detection of crime including fraud and money laundering.

The Council may also use your information for the purpose of performing any of its statutory enforcement duties.

It will make any disclosures required by law and may also share your information with other bodies responsible for detecting/preventing crime including fraud or auditing/administering public funds.

There is also information about your computer hardware and software that is automatically collected by Preston City Council.

This information can include:

• your IP address 
• browser type 
• domain names
• access times
• referring website addresses.

This information is used by Preston City Council for the operation of the service, to maintain quality of the service, and to provide general statistics regarding use of the Preston City Council website.

We will not disclose your personal information to third parties for marketing purposes.

What are your rights

You have the right to:

• request a copy of your information (known as a subject access request)
• request rectification or erasure of your information,
• request a restriction on the processing of your information, and,
• object to processing of your information,
• complain to the Information Commissioner's Office about the way the Council processes your information.
• set your browser to remove or reject cookies before using Preston City Council website 

If you require further information about the use of your data or would like to exercise any of the above rights, please contact:

Data Protection Officer
Preston City Council
Town Hall
Lancaster Road
Preston
PR1 2RL

Transferring information overseas

In certain circumstances we may transfer your information to organisations in other countries on the basis that anyone to whom we pass it protects it in the same way we would and in accordance with applicable laws.

How long we keep your information

We will keep your information for as long as it is required by us for the purpose we are processing the data for.

As a minimum, your information will be kept for the duration of the response to Covid-19.

The names and contact details collected from visitors to our sites for NHS Test and Trace purposes will be retained for 21 days.

Website information

Preston City Council encourages you to review the privacy statements of Web sites you choose to link to from Preston City Council so that you can understand how those Web sites collect, use and share your information.

Preston City Council is not responsible for the privacy statements or other content on Web sites outside of the Preston City Council family of Web sites.

Use of Cookies

The Preston City Council website use "cookies" to help you personalise your online experience.

A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a Website via your web browser. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you, and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you.

For more information please refer to our which refers to our cookies policy.