Privacy notice – Portishead business survey

North Somerset Council is conducting a survey of Portishead businesses. The survey aims to gather valuable insights from local businesses to inform the allocation of the Portishead Economic Development Fund. The data gathered will be used to design a grant scheme for businesses in Portishead and Portbury.

The survey seeks to understand the support, training, and financial needs of Portishead and Portbury businesses. Your feedback will help us design a grant scheme that addresses the most pressing needs of the local business community and avoids duplicating existing support schemes.

We use Snap Surveys Limited to manage and distribute this survey. Snap Surveys hosts the survey on its platform and is prohibited from sharing your personal data with third parties. Snap Surveys only processes the data in accordance with our instructions and data protection regulations.

For more details on Snap’s data handling, please refer to Snap's privacy policy on their website. 

For more information on our pledge fair funding for North Somerset, visit our privacy policy.

North Somerset Council is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office for the purposes of processing personal data. For full details of how we use personal data, view our privacy notices and data protection webpage.

The information you provide will be held and used in accordance with the requirements of UK and European data protection law.

As soon as the survey administration is complete, your personal information is removed from all survey files.

Information that contributes to any reports or evaluations may be held longer but will be anonymised to protect the confidentiality of individuals at all times.

We will also ask for geographical data, such as postcode, to analyse responses by different areas, for instance, by ward. You are not required to give this information if you do not wish to.

How we comply with data protection laws

The processing of this information is lawful under Article 6(1)(e) of the General Data Protection Regulations. The processing is necessary to perform a task in the public interest for our official functions; or the task or function has a clear basis in the law. This survey supports the delivery of public services including to understand your needs, to provide the services that you request, to understand what we can do for you and inform you of other relevant services.

Profiling and automated decision making

Your personal information is not used for any automated decision-making or profiling except where you have asked us to inform you only about surveys on certain topics or where we analyse free text responses to some questions using encrypted AI tools.

Who we may share your information with

We may lawfully disclose information to public sector agencies to prevent or detect fraud or other crime, or to support the national fraud initiatives and protect public funds under the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. 

Under the conditions of the Digital Economy Act 2017, we may also share personal data provided to us with other public authorities as defined in the Act, to improve public service delivery, or for statistical research. We do not share the information with other organisations for commercial purposes.

At no point is your data shared or processed outside of the UK.

You have the right to see the personal data we process about you, as well as the right of objection, rectification, and restriction to the processing.

If you have any questions or concerns about how your personal data is handled, contact our Data Protection Officer at DPO@n-somerset.gov.uk.

If you are unhappy about the way we have treated your personal data or for independent advice about data protection, privacy, and data sharing, you can contact the Information Commissioner's Office.