PN025 - Equalities Privacy Notice

Torfaen County Borough Council is committed to protecting your privacy when you use our services. This Privacy Notice is designed to give you information about the data we hold about you, how we use it, your rights in relation to it and the safeguards in place to protect it.

TCBC Service Area: Public Services Support Unit (PSSU)
Work area: Partnership, Policy and Equalities
Contact Details: Sarah Tipping, Sarah.Tipping@torfaen.gov.uk
Privacy Notice Name: Equalities

Data Controller: Torfaen County Borough Council, c/o Civic Centre, Pontypool, NP4 6YB

If you wish to raise a concern about the handling of your personal data, please contact the Data Protection Officer on 01495 762200 or email dpa@torfaen.gov.uk

The Equalities team undertake monitoring to identify and support residents, service users and staff with protected characteristics in terms of ensuring their needs are met, to tackle prejudice, promote understanding, encourage participation in public life and remove or minimise disadvantage.

Who provides your data to the Council?

The personal information we process is provided to us directly by you, carers or parents and guardians.

Some information is provided to us indirectly via our Human Resources department.

How does the Council collect this information?

Direct from the employee:

for example, on iFOR, recruitment application forms, staff profile audit questionnaires, surveys, training feedback forms and via information provided to the Line Manager
The Workforce Development Team also analyse information from the Human Resources and recruitment system to produce reports.

Citizen, resident and service user information is obtained:

Direct from the service user when they contact us or receive Council services, this can be via forms (both online and paper) or email.
If applicable, we may also gather information from other sources, for example carers and parental guardians.

What information does the Council collect about you?

The Equalities team collects and processes a range of information about you. This includes personal information about our workforce (i.e. employees and potential employees). The type of information we collect, use and analyse includes:

Name, address and contact details.
Sensitive information relating to an employee’s protected characteristics such as their age, sex, disability, ethnicity and nationality, sexual orientation, religion or belief, gender identity, marital status, pregnancy and maternity
The department the employee works in and the salary grade they are paid.
Training that people have attended.

For our citizens, residents and service users (i.e. the people who live in Torfaen, visit Torfaen or receive services from us), the type of information we collect, use and analyse could include:

Sensitive information relating to an individuals protected characteristics such as their age, sex, disability, ethnicity and nationality, sexual orientation, religion or belief, gender identity, marital status, pregnancy and maternity
Services individuals access, their opinions about the service and how it could be improved

Why does the Council process your personal data?

Under Article 6 of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the lawful bases we rely on for processing this information is:

(e) We need it to perform a public task.

We process your personal data to ensure that we are compliant with the Equality Act 2010.

Special categories of personal data

We collect the following special category data:

personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin
personal data revealing religious or philosophical beliefs
data concerning a person’s sexual orientation

We collect this under Article 9 of the UK GDPR

We do not collect any criminal data.

Who has access to your data?

Your data is shared internally only with the appropriate staff where it is necessary for the performance of their roles.

When data is required to be shared with other bodies, such as Welsh Government, it is anonymised.

Apart from where previously stated, we do not pass your details to third parties unless we are lawfully required do so.

Is the Data transferred out of the UK?

How does the Council keep your data secure?

The Council has internal policies in place to ensure the data it processes is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed. Access to this data is restricted in accordance with the Council’s internal policies and in compliance with the UK GDPR.

We store data within a secure IT database which is provided by Civica, which has ISO 27001 certification

Where the Council engages third parties to process personal data on its behalf, they do so on the basis of written instructions. These third parties are also under a duty of confidentiality and are obliged to implement appropriate measures to ensure the security of data.

How long does the Council keep your data?

The Council will hold your personal data only for the period that is necessary and will follow organisational and Local Authority standards in this area. At the end of the retention period the Council will securely destroy or dispose of the data in line with retention schedules.

Are we making automated decisions/profiling with your data?

Your rights

You have a number of Rights you can exercise:

Access - to obtain a copy of your data on request
Rectification – to require the Council to change incorrect or incomplete data
Object, Restrict or Delete - under certain circumstances you can require the Council to delete or stop processing your data, for example where the data is no longer necessary for the purposes of processing
Data portability – to receive and/or transmit data provided to the Council to other organisations (this applies in limited circumstances)
Withdraw your consent at any time (where consent has been given)
To know the consequences of failing to provide data to the Council
To know the existence of any Automated Decision-making, including profiling, and the consequences of this for you.
To lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority (Information Commissioners Office)

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact: Sarah Tipping, Civic Centre, Pontypool. Sarah.Tipping@torfaen.gov.uk

The Information Commissioner can be contacted at: The Information Commissioner’s Office (Wales), 2nd Floor, Churchill House, Churchill Way, Cardiff, CF10 2HH. Telephone 0330 414 6421 or e-mail Wales@ico.org.uk.

Last Modified: 17/07/2023 Back to top