Privacy notice for Registration and Celebratory Services

What do we use the information for?

Registration and celebratory services collects, processes and holds your personal and financial information in order to provide our services effectively.

• To register births, deaths, marriages and civil partnerships
• To conduct naming, renewal and celebratory ceremonies
• To offer name-change facilities. 

We also use information to improve our services so that they are more appropriate to people’s requirements.  We recognise that your personal information is important to you, and we take our responsibilities for ensuring that we collect and manage it proportionately, correctly and safely very seriously.

What information do we hold and use?

We collect and process the following information:

• Personal information (including full name, full residential address, data of birth)
• Location data (including postcode and telephone number) 
• Characteristics (such as ethnicity, sex, religion) 
• Bank details for invoicing/ payments. 

Please note that bank details are not retained once processed by registration and celebratory services.

On what grounds do we use the information?

Registration and celebratory services collect and lawfully process your personal information under the following:

• Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953
• Marriage Act 1949
• Civil Partnership Act 2004 .

We process personal data for the following reasons:

• GDPR Article 6(1)(a) – the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes
• GDPR Article 6(1)(b) – processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party or in order to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract
• GDPR Article 6(1)(c) – processing is necessary for compliance with legal obligation to which the controller, Registration and Celebratory Services, is subject
• GDPR Article 6(1)(e) – processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller, namely registration and celebratory services. 

We process special category data for the following reason:

• GDPR Article 9(2)(a) - the data subject has given explicit consent to the processing of those personal data for one or more specified purposes, except where Union or Member State law provide that the prohibition referred to in paragraph 1 may not be lifted by the data subject.

How do we collect this information?

We may collect information in the following ways:

• Postal application forms
• Email
• Telephone
• Face to face.

Who do we share your information with?

We may disclose your information to others, but only where this is necessary either to comply with our legal obligations or as permitted by Data Protection legislation. We may share it with other public service bodies including the Registrar General for England and Wales so that a central record of all registrations can be maintained. 

The reasons why we may share your data with other public bodies are as follows:

• Statistical or research purposes 
• Administrative purposes by official bodies e.g. ensuring their records are up-to-date
• Fraud prevention or detection
• Immigration and passport purposes

We will not pass your personal information to external organisations for marketing or sales purposes or for any commercial use without your prior expressed consent.

How long do we store it and is it secure?

Registration and celebratory services have a retention schedule in place to ensure that information is only held for as long as it is needed. We will not keep your information for longer than is required to by law. Your information will be disposed of in a controlled and secure manner in accordance with the council’s Records Management and Data Quality Policy. The council’s IT security and confidentiality policies ensure that your information is protected, and accessed only by staff directly involved in your case.  

For information on how long your information will be held, visit the retention page.

What rights do you have?

The rights that you have depend on the grounds upon which we collected your information.  All of the rights you could have are outlined on the data protection rights page. 

• The right of access - you are entitled to see the information that we hold about you
• The right to rectification - we will amend information accordingly, if any information the service holds about you is incorrect
• The right to restrict processing - you ay wish to limit how we use your data 
• The right to object – in addition to the right to limit the use of your data, you also have a right to object to the use of you data for certain actions 
• The right to erasure/ right to be forgotten - in certain circumstances, you may be able to ask for some of the information we hold to be deleted. The service has determined that all requests to permanently delete a service user record will be dealt with on an individual basis.

To exercise any of your above rights, please visit the data protection rights page for more information.  

Where can I find out more?

If you would like to know more about how the council uses information, your rights or have a concern about the way we are collecting or using your personal data, we request that you raise your concern with us in the first instance; contact details are available on the general privacy information page. Alternatively, you can contact the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). The ICO is the UK’s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest and they handle public concerns regarding organisations information rights practices.

Information Commissioner’s Office (external website) 

When was this privacy notice last updated?

We will continually review and update this privacy notice to reflect any changes in our services, feedback from customers, and to comply with any changes in the law. This privacy notice was last updated on 16 December 2020.