An elected councillor at Crawley Borough Council is a controller accountable for the processing of personal information in connection with requests from residents who contact them in their role as a councillor.

As part of the role as a councillor they contact officers of the council and other organisations on your behalf to investigate your concerns and to respond to your enquiries.  This means they need to collect your personal data so that they can process your request for assistance or respond to your enquiry.  They will only collect personal data from you that is needed to provide you with the relevant information, services or support.

When you ask for help the following personal information might be collected:

• Your name
• Address
• Contact details together with details of your problem or concern

In some cases this may include sensitive personal data. It will only be necessary to collect this type of information where it is of relevance to the request you are making.

To collect and use your personal information it is necessary to have a lawful basis.  The legal bases relied on for processing personal information in relation to responding to requests from constituents is:

• Consent or explicit consent of the constituent making the request (or any other relevant persons where this is appropriate)
• Necessary in pursuit of legitimate interests as an elected representative and those of constituents and it is assessed that these interests override any privacy intrusion involved in processing personal data about other individuals
• Discharging functions as an elected representative for the purpose of responding to requests from constituents where this is permissible, without explicit consent

In order to deal with your enquiry it may be necessary to pass your information on to council officers to allow the council to look into the issue.  That information may need to be shared with other parties e.g. other councillors, an MP, local authorities, government agencies and public bodies as appropriate in pursuance of dealing with your case.  Where possible you will be told when it has been necessary to share information.

Your personal data will be kept for the minimum period necessary; usually until your issue is resolved and usually no longer than 4 years.  All information will be held securely and disposed of confidentially.

You are entitled to the following rights:

• Right of access – you have the right to request a copy of the information held about you
• Right of rectification – you have a right to correct data held about you if it is inaccurate or incomplete
• Right to be forgotten – in certain circumstances you can ask for data held about you to be erased from records
• Right to restriction of processing – where certain conditions apply you have the right to ask for restrictions to processing of your data
• Right of portability – in certain circumstances you have the right to have the data held about you transferred to another organisation
• Right to object – you have the right object to certain types of processing, such as direct marketing
• Right to object to automated processing, including profiling – you have the right to ask for a decision made on a wholly automated basis which legally affects you to be reviewed by a human being

If you have any worries or questions about how your personal information is handled please contact our Data Protection Officer.

For independent advice about data protection, privacy and data rights, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO):

• Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire DK9 5AF
• Tel:  0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745 if you prefer to use a national rate number
• Visit ico.org.uk
• Email casework@ico.org.uk