How we use your personal information

As a local authority we deliver services to you. In order to do this in an effective way we will need to collect and use personal information about you.

This is broad overview of how and why we use your personal information and who we may share it with. If you use a specific council service we will usually let you know how your personal information will be used by that service.

The law (the Data Protection Act 1998) ensures that personal information about you is used fairly and in accordance with the eight data protection principles. These principles are there to protect you and they make sure that we:

  • Don't hold more information about you than we need,
  • Ensure information we hold about you is accurate,
  • Keep it secure,
  • Keep it only for as long as it is necessary and,
  • Ensure that all personal data is processed lawfully and legally.

All local authorities have a duty to improve the health of the population they serve. To help with this, we use data and information from a range of source data, including data collected at the registration of a birth or death to understand more about the health and care needs in the area.

How long we keep your information for

We will only keep your information for as long as it is required to be retained. The retention period is either dictated by law or by our discretion. Once your information is no longer needed it will be securely and confidentially destroyed.

Sharing your information

To ensure that the county council provides you with an efficient and effective service we will sometimes need to share your information between teams within the county council as well as with our partner organisations, for example; the NHS, district councils, the fire service and voluntary organisations that support the delivery of the service you may receive. We will also need to supply your information to organisations we have contracted to provide a service to you.

We will only ever share your information if we are satisfied that our partners have sufficient measures in place to protect your information in the same way that we do. Anyone who receives information from us has a legal duty to keep it confidentiality.

We will never share your information for marketing purposes.

Using your information without your consent

We will usually seek your consent prior to processing or sharing your information, however, if there is a legal reason, as outlined under the Data Protection Act 1998, we may not require your consent.

Your rights

You have the right to request that the county council stops processing your personal data in relation to any service you are receiving from the council, their partners or their contractors. This however, may cause delays in the services we can provide and in some cases prevent the service from being provided.

You have the right to request a copy of any information the county council holds about you.

The county council will always strive to keep the information it holds as accurate as possible. If you find that this is not the case then you have a right to request that this information is corrected.

Further information

Lancashire County Council is a registered data controller with the Information Commissioner’s Office. You can search the register of data controllers (external link) to find out more about:

  • Reasons/purposes for which we process information
  • Type/classes of information we process
  • Who we process information about
  • Who we may share information with

For more details about data protection please refer to the Information Commissioner's Office website (external link).

You can also contact us if you would like to know more about how we use your information.

Contact details

Information Governance Team
Lancashire County Council
PO Box78
County Hall
Preston
PR1 8XJ

Email: dataprotection@lancashire.gov.uk

Compliment, comment or complaints

If you wish to make a compliment, comment or complaint about how your data is being processed by the council, then please visit send a compliment or comment or make a complaint to the council.