Covid-19 Grants 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.

Collecting personal data

Preston City Council collects your personal information when you apply for any of the grants or payments for businesses due to COVID-19 and this privacy notice explains how we will use it.

We will:

• only ask you for the information that is necessary to consider your application for the grant or payment
• protect it and make sure nobody has access to it who shouldn't
• ensure you know if you have a choice about giving us information
• make sure we don't keep it for longer than is necessary

We ask that you:

• give us accurate information
• tell us as soon as possible of any changes
• tell us as soon as possible if you notice mistakes in the information we hold about you

If you don't provide the personal information requested by us, we may not be able to provide you with the information you need or process your application.

What we need

We will only collect basic personal data about you which includes your name, address, telephone number, email etc. together with information you have given us and information that we receive from third parties e.g. landlords.

We collect your information to undertake assessment of applications for the Coronavirus Business Support Grants. In doing so, we may collect:

• Contact details (name, address, telephone number)
• Date of Birth
• Financial Information about your business (this includes bank account details)
• Copies of business bank statements to prove your business address
• Your latest business accounts
• VAT number
• Unique Tax Reference Number
• Company Number
• Number of employees
• Other forms of evidence

Why we need it

The Council uses your personal information in order to administer Coronavirus Business Support Grants.

Information gathered will enable the Council to provide financial assistance in accordance with government guidance and eligibility criteria.

What we do with it

Your personal information will be treated as confidential but it may be shared with other Council services in order to ensure our records are accurate and up-to-date, and to improve the standard of the services we deliver.

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 and 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.

Information held relating to grant applications will be shared with other government departments, including:

• The Department for Business
• Energy and Industrial Strategy
• The Cabinet Office
• The Office for National Statistics
• National Fraud Initiative (NFI)
• Her Majesty's Revenues and Customs (HMRC)
• The Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government
• Government counter fraud departments.

Information may also be shared with external partners including enforcement agents and Lancashire County Council.

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 or other regulatory bodies in order to comply with legal and regulatory requirements or for other operational reasons. In most cases this will be a minimum of six years.

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.