Elective Home Education

In order to comply with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), where personal data relating to a data subject is collected, Lancashire County Council would like to provide you with the following details.

Identity and contact details of the data controller

  • Lancashire County Council, PO Box 78 County Hall, Fishergate, Preston, Lancashire, PR1 8XJ

Contact details of the data protection officer

  • Our Data Protection Officer is Paul Bond. You can contact him at dpo@lancashire.gov.uk or Lancashire County Council, PO Box 78 County Hall, Fishergate, Preston, Lancashire, PR1 8XJ

Purposes for processing

The Elective Home Education (EHE) team provide advice and guidance to families who are home educating their children, ensure an appropriate standard of education is provided, and signpost to the Pupil Access Team where reintegration into school is requested by parents.

The Children and Young People (CYP) Integrated Data Set – IMPULSE

The EHE service retains personal data within the IMPULSE platform.

The CYP Data Set – IMPULSE is utilised by LCC and contains personal data and special category information about children attending LCC schools and matches additional personal data from multiple data sources within LCC to the pupils.

The aim of the dataset is to allow statistical analysis and research to: -

  • support and inform council transformation by ensuring the holistic characteristics and needs of the child population are fully understood
  • provide appropriate levels of insight, evidence and evaluation to embed knowledge and understanding of children and young people’s needs and issues into service programmes and projects, including the commissioning of new services
  • inform future service delivery planning and integrated working to improve outcomes for children and young people.

We have robust processes in place to ensure the confidentiality of our data is maintained and there are stringent controls in place regarding access and use of the data. The child-level data set is not shared outside of LCC. All personal data is stored in secured electronic files with restricted access. Only anonymised or pseudonymized data is used for analysis. Outputs and analysis take the form of aggregated data and are for the purpose of LCC teams and partners working to improve outcomes for children and young people.

Category of personal data being processed

  1. Personal data (information relating to a living, identifiable individual)
  2. Special category personal data (racial, ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person's sex life or sexual orientation)

Legal basis for processing personal data

The legal basis for processing your personal data, in accordance with the UK GDPR Article 6 (1) is:

(a) Consent: the individual has given clear consent for you to process their personal data for a specific purpose.

We will contact you about EHE events, information and services usually accessed through schools with your consent, but you can opt out of receiving these notifications at any time by contacting the team.

(c) Legal Obligation: the processing is necessary for you to comply with the law. You must reference the applicable legislation if you wish to rely on this basis for processing.

(e) Public Task: the processing is necessary for you to perform a task in the public interest or for your official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law. You must reference the applicable task/function and its' basis in law if you wish to rely on this basis for processing.

These articles under the GDPR and the DPA 2018 are supported by the following specific legislation:

Under these lawful basis we do not require your consent to process your personal data but we are required, through this privacy notice, to ensure you are fully informed of why we are collecting this information and what we will do with it.

Please note that no automated decision making (decisions taken without a person involved) occurs for any parts of these activities controlled by the County Council and that the County Council does use profiling as part of the service.

Legal basis for processing special categories of personal data

The legal basis for processing your special categories of personal data, in accordance with the UK GDPR Article 9 (2) is:

(g) Processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest.

(h) Processing is necessary for the purposes of preventive or occupational medicine, for the assessment of the working capacity of the employee, medical diagnosis, the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health or social care systems and services.

UK GDPR Article 9 (2) (g) Substantial Public Interest is relied on by virtue of the following legislation:

Recipients of the data

There will be circumstances where Lancashire County Council will be required to share your personal data with external organisations. If we are ever required to do so we will ensure full compliance with UK GDPR and Data Protection Act (2018) and will ensure security and confidentiality of your personal data at all times.

We will also only ever share your personal data where we have a clear lawful basis for doing so, for example where there is a safeguarding concern or for co-operation to improve well-being.

We may share your personal information with:

  • teams within LCC working to improve outcomes for children and young people
  • commissioned providers of local authority services (such as education services)
  • schools
  • schools and In-Year Fair Access (IYFA) panels, when a school a place is required at the request of the parent or when a suitable education is not being provided and a school needs to be identified for the purpose of a School Attendance Order
  • post-16 education and training providers
  • partner organisations, where necessary, which may include NHS, health visitors, midwives, police, doctors and mental health workers
  • The Vaccinations Service – NHS Blackpool Teaching Hospitals and Intrahealth.
  • Lancashire Healthy Young People and Families Service (Virgin Care Services Limited on behalf of Lancashire County Council)
  • Department of Education, and other government departments, as required

We will share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities if required by applicable law.

Information we share

In the course of supporting and monitoring Elective Home Education we collect the following personal information when you provide it to us:

  • personal details (such as name, gender, age, date of birth, address, contact details, language, nationality, country of birth, receipt of free school meals)
  • special category characteristics (such as ethnicity and special educational needs)
  • educational history (such as schools previously attended and attendance, attainment, and exclusion information)
  • other professional involvement (such as Attendance and Inclusion, Early Help, Social Care, SEN/Inclusion)
  • EHE History (communication with families, visit reports and evidence of suitable education)

We also obtain personal information from other sources including personal details, characteristics, educational history and professional involvement, from previously attended schools, other local authorities, and other LCC departments.

Any transfers to another country

  • No

Retention periods

Lancashire County Council will only store your information for as long as is legally required or in situations where there is no legal retention period they will follow established best practice.

File type Description Security Retention period

Child/Young person's file

Record retained of the child/young person who is supported by the Elective Home Education Service

a) Without SEND

b) With SEND

Records are held on LCC's secure platforms that ensure security and confidentiality of personal data at all times

Retained until the individual reaches the age of

a) 25 and then securely destroyed

b) 45 and then securely destroyed

Your rights

You have certain rights under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), these are the right:

  • to be informed via Privacy Notices such as this.
  • to withdraw your consent. If we are relying on your consent to process your data, then you can remove this at any point.
  • of access to any personal information the council holds about yourself. To request a copy of this information you must make a subject access request in writing. You are entitled to receive a copy of your personal data within 1 calendar month of our receipt of your subject access request. If your request is complex then we can extend this period by a further two months, if we need to do this, we will contact you. You can request a subject access request, either via a letter or via an email to Information Governance Team, address below.
  • of rectification, we must correct inaccurate or incomplete data within one month.
  • to erasure. You have the right to have your personal data erased and to prevent processing unless we have a legal obligation to process your personal information.
  • to restrict processing. You have the right to suppress processing. We can retain just enough information about you to ensure that the restriction is respected in future.
  • to data portability. We can provide you with your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine readable form when asked.
  • to object. You can object to your personal data being used for profiling, direct marketing or research purposes.
  • in relation to automated decision making and profiling, to reduce the risk that a potentially damaging decision is taken without human intervention.

If you want to exercise any of these rights, then you can do so by contacting:

Information Governance Team
Lancashire County Council
PO Box 78
County Hall
Preston
PR1 8XJ

Email: dpo@lancashire.gov.uk

To ensure that we can deal with your request as efficiently as possible you will need to include your current name and address, proof of identity (a copy of your driving licence, passport or two different utility bills that display your name and address), as much detail as possible regarding your request so that we can identify any information we may hold about you, this may include your previous name and address, date of birth and what council service you were involved with.

Further information

If you would like more information about the Elective Home Education Service, then please contact Enquiries.EHE@lancashire.gov.uk

For more information about how we use personal information see Lancashire County Council's full privacy notice.

If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, you can contact the Information Governance team who will investigate the matter.

Lancashire County Council, PO Box 78 County Hall, Fishergate, Preston, Lancashire, PR1 8XJ or email: dataprotection@lancashire.gov.uk

If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are processing your personal data not in accordance with the law you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).