Your privacy

This page provides an overview of how we collect and use information about you. It also includes links to other pages that detail how we use your information for specific services we provide.

Our privacy promise

Your personal information is just that - personal. We promise to treat it with the highest standards of security and confidentiality at all times and in compliance with relevant legislation.

We need to collect your personal information in order to provide our services to you. This includes information that you provide over the telephone, on forms, by email, letter, in person and online. We'll only collect information that's necessary or is required by law and we'll explain the reasons for this at the time of collection.

Personal information provided to us will be shared, where necessary by the service which has received the information, with other council services without explicit consent to do so. This will only occur where there's been a request made by yourself (for example, you've asked for support or contact to be made by another service), or where there's a statutory or procedural responsibility to do so. It's important that you make sure to keep us updated of any changes made to your personal information where you've had ongoing contact with a service.

You may choose not to provide us with your personal information, although some of our services may not be available as a result. We'll tell you when this is the case.

Who we are

Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council is a local authority as prescribed under the Local Government Act 1972 and is registered as a data controller with the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Our registration number is Z5121328.

We have an appointed data protection officer who can be contacted at dpo@barnsley.gov.uk.

Find out more about data protection on the Information Commissioner's Office website.

If you're hard-of-hearing, you can watch a BSL video to learn how the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) may affect you.

Types of personal information we collect from you

The types of personal information we collect will vary depending on the service being provided to you and our service specific privacy notices provide more detailed information where applicable.

You can also find out what type of information we collect and holds about you, and what we do with it by submitting a Subject Access Request.

Why we need your personal information

We collect and process data for a number of purposes, including in the provision of statutory services. Some examples of the reasons we process data are:

collection of Council Tax, business rates and for the processing of benefit claims
provision of social care services
provision of education services, including EHCPs
to comply with legal requirements, such as obligations imposed under the Equality Act or Health and Safety at Work Act
for enforcement action, such as licensing, planning, trading standard, food safety etc where such action is required
to facilitate peer reviews and challenges, both statutory and voluntary. These reviews allow us to have an independent assessment of the services we provide with the aim of identifying improvements we can make.
to identify residents in the borough who may be eligible for additional support, for example due to financial vulnerability, and plan services appropriately. This is achieved using business intelligence solutions to analyse data held by us.

This list isn't exhaustive and more information can be found in our list of service specific privacy notices.

How we collect your personal information

We collect your personal data in various ways depending on the service. Some examples of the methods in which we collect data are:

in person - via meetings with social workers, registrars etc.
online - via online forms on our website
telephone - via our contact centre or through direct contact with services
post
sharing with third parties - in some cases we may receive referrals from the police, ambulance service or other local authorities.

Our legal basis for processing your information

We'll only process personal information where it has your consent to do so or the law says that we can. In any case, we'll ensure that an appropriate legal basis for processing your data is met under article 6 and article 9 of the UK GDPR as appropriate.

Where applicable, our service specific privacy notices will inform you of the specific legal basis we're utilising to process that data.

Sharing your information

We may need to share your information with other organisations, for example, The Department of Work and Pensions, NHS, police or care agencies, and third parties working on our behalf, so we can all work together to deliver key services. We'll only ever share your information with them if there's a need to do so and we have your consent, or the law allows us to.

How long your information will be kept

We retain the personal information it collects as long as necessary and in accordance with its retention schedule. Further information on specific retention periods is made available in service specific privacy notices or is available on request.

What happens if you fail to provide personal information

If you don't share your personal information with us, we may not be able to deliver specific services to you, particularly where your involvement is voluntary and with consent.

Some services can collect and process your personal data without consent, where the law allows us to do so.

How to access and control your personal information

The UK GDPR gives you the right of access to both:

the right to confirm confirmation that your data is being processed
access to your personal data and supplementary information on how we process it.

Further information can be obtained on our personal information requests page.

We use your information generally in the following ways:

Online news archive

Our online news archive provides you with a 12 month accessible archive of all the media releases we’ve published.

We'll look at each case individually if we're asked to remove content, but we can't remove this from third parties if it's been shared from our website.

Media releases on court reporting

You can find more information about court reporting and what to expect on the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) website.

IPSO suggest that if convictions have been ‘spent’, you may have legal rights to have links to articles about these convictions to be removed from search engines. You can contact the search engine companies and ask them to remove it from the search results.

Artificial Intelligence

We utilise artificial intelligence (AI) to enable residents to self-serve on its website rather than waiting for our staff to be available. This AI is known as B-Bot and enables residents to locate information on the website by asking the bot for assistance. This doesn't replace any existing services or channels to reach the council.

The bot will process limited personal information in order to respond to a query, such as taking your address to facilitate an enquiry such as bin collection dates.

We also utilise Microsoft Copilot to assist with back office functions such as assisting with writing letters and emails, locating information and time management. Copilot isn't utilised in a way that would lead to any automated decision making and the personal data processing aspect is limited.

CCTV

We operate CCTV cameras across the borough to help prevent anti-social behaviour and crime. Full details are available on the CCTV page.

Accessibility

If you need help understanding this information, or would like a paper copy of this notice, please contact us.