Privacy and cookies policy

Cookies

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Privacy

Data protection legislation has changed with the introduction of a new Data Protection Act, implementing the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). You have greater powers to protect your own privacy, and there is greater responsibility on those processing your data for any purpose. The following is to explain your rights and give you the information you will be entitled to under the new Act.

THE IDENTITY AND CONTACT DETAILS OF MHCLG AND CABINET OFFICE AND OUR DATA PROTECTION OFFICERS

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) is the data controller. The Data Protection Officer at MHCLG can be contacted at [email protected].

Why we are collecting the data

We collect your data for the following purposes:

Legal basis for processing the data

Data protection legislation sets out when we are lawfully allowed to process your data. The lawful basis that applies in this case is that you give us your clear consent for us to process your personal data for this purpose.

With whom we will be sharing the data

Your data will be accessible to the data controller but will not otherwise be shared. Your contact data will be stored and accessed via a secure MailChimp account

For how long we will keep the personal data, or criteria used to determine the retention period

Your contact details will be held until you request that we delete it or when we no longer need to contact you about this topic.

Your rights for example access, rectification, erasure

The data we are collecting is your personal data, and you have rights that affect what happens to it. You have the right to:

Sending data overseas

We use a service called MailChimp to handle the sending of alerts and information packs by email, which is operated by The Rocket Science Group, based in Atlanta, U.S.A.

MailChimp participates in and has certified its compliance with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework. It is committed to subjecting all Personal Information received from European Union (EU) member countries, in reliance on the Privacy Shield Framework, to the Framework’s applicable Principles. To learn more about the Privacy Shield Framework, visit the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Privacy Shield website

Emails sent from MailChimp contain both HTML and plain text versions. If you choose to view the messages in HTML mode, these contain small tracking codes to help us evaluate the usefulness of the material we are sending. Operationally, we do not review this data at individual level, only as aggregated scores.

Full privacy information relating to MailChimp

Automated decision making

We will not use your data for any automated decision making

Storage, security and data management

Your data will be stored in a password-protected account on MailChimp, following their privacy policies.

Complaints and more information

When we ask you for information, we will keep to the law, including all new legislation coming into force.

If you are unhappy with the way the department has acted, you can make a complaint

If you are not happy with how we are using your personal data, you should first contact [email protected].

If you are still not happy, or for independent advice about data protection, privacy and data sharing, you can contact:

The Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow, Cheshire,
SK9 5AF

Telephone: 0303 123 1113 or 01625 545 745