Public Health – Local Welfare Provision

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

Public Health has a legal duty to protect and improve the health and wellbeing in Lancashire. The processing of data is necessary for the performance of this task carried out in the public interest and for compliance with the legal obligation as set out in the Welfare Reform Act 2012. To help with this, our Public Health Team use data and information from a range of sources including the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

We act as a data processor and as a data controller. This means that we collect and process personal information and data. We comply with the DWP information governance standards to allow us access to DWP benefits information.

Types of information we use

We work with many types of data to be able to promote health and support improvements in the delivery of health and care services in Lancashire. This includes the processing of:

Personal data: information relating to a living, identifiable individual

Identifiable data: data that can identify individuals, but which does not meet the definition of 'personal data', as defined in Article 4 (1) UK GDPR, in that the data relates to deceased individuals

Pseudonymised data: personal identifiable data is replaced with artificial identifiers in order for Public Health staff to use the information without being able to identify any individuals.

Anonymised data: information about individuals that has all identifying details removed

Aggregated data: this is where all anonymised data is grouped together and it is not possible to identify individuals

To support Lancashire district authorities in delivering the Household Support Fund, we need to obtain, hold, and share information that includes personal characteristics.

Information we receive

To help us fulfil our legal obligations regarding Local Welfare Provision, we receive information from DWP. Data relating to the Household Support Fund includes personal information about individuals in receipt of Universal Credit, Pension Credit, Income Related Employment Support Allowance and Housing Benefit:

  • Claimant name
  • Claimant address
  • Claimant National Insurance Number
  • Details of benefits received

The data are supplied to Lancashire County Council by DWP under strict data disclosure controls. The data are downloaded via DWP's secure electronic Transfer Your File system. Any downloaded data are stored on Lancashire County Councils secure network and access is restricted to two named members of staff.

Category of personal data being processed

  1. Personal data (information relating to a living, identifiable individual)

Legal basis for processing personal data

The legal basis for processing your personal data, in accordance with the UK GDPR is:

Article 6 (1) (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.

Official authority is vested in the controller by virtue of:

Section 31 (3) and Section 31 (4) and Local Government Act 2003; and Regulation 5(1)(a)(iii) of the Social Security Regulations 2012, made under Section 131(1) of the Welfare Reform Act 2012.

Recipients of the data

The information provided to Lancashire County Council by the DWP will be shared with local district councils for the purposes of delivering Local Welfare Provision including the Household Support Fund. Information will not be shared with any other third parties. You can refuse permission for us to share your information, however this may limit how much we may be able to support you. We do not publish any information that is identifiable.

Data will be shared with the following district councils:

  • Burnley Borough Council
  • Chorley Borough Council
  • Fylde Borough Council
  • Hyndburn Borough Council
  • Lancaster City Council
  • Pendle Borough Council
  • Preston City Council
  • Ribble Valley Borough Council
  • Rossendale Borough Council
  • South Ribble Borough Council
  • West Lancashire Borough Council
  • Wyre Borough Council

Information we share

Personal data (information relating to a living, identifiable individual)

  • Name
  • Address/Postcode
  • National insurance number
  • Benefit receipt details

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
Dataset Department for Work and Pensions Monthly Data Share – Individual Data File Stored securely on LCC network and accessible only by two named officers with Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) clearance agreed with DWP All data is destroyed upon completion of data processing. Lancashire County Council store each data download file for a maximum of six weeks.
Dataset Department for Work and Pensions Monthly Data Share – Aggregate Data File Stored securely on LCC network and accessible only by two named officers with Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) clearance agreed with DWP Data files will be retained for the duration of the funding period (March 2024) plus 7 years in line with LCC record management policies

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 this specific project then please contact via email: enquiries@lancashire.gov.uk or telephone: 0300 123 6701.

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).