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Privacy notice – contact us and complaints

North Somerset Council is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office for the purposes of processing personal data.

The information you provide will be held and used in accordance with the requirements of UK and European data protection law. The information will form part of your account, and will be held for the time indicated below:

  • general enquiry – no longer than 12 months
  • service request – two years
  • stage 1 and stage 2 complaints – three years
  • Local Government Ombudsman complaint – three years

Unless otherwise agreed with you, we will only collect the minimum personal data required to deliver the service, which includes name, address, telephone number and email address.

The information will be used to investigate your enquiry, which we consider to be lawful in accordance with article 6(1)(e) of GDPR, as this is significantly in the public interest. We also have a statutory obligation under section 3 of the Local Government Act 1974 to respond to complaints in accordance with GDPR article 6(1)(b).

We will not use your personal information in a way that may cause you unwarranted nuisance. Failure to provide the information could result in our inability to deal with your enquiry.

The information provided may be shared with the Local Government Ombudsman, who have demonstrated that they have a lawful and legitimate interest in the information, for the purposes of investigating a complaint made by you in the handling of your enquiry. Your data will never be shared or processed outside of the UK.

If you have nominated an advocate to represent you, the information provided may be shared with them in order to resolve your complaint or service request.

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, for the purposes of fraud or crime detection or prevention, to recover monies owed to us, to improve public service delivery, or for statistical research. We do not share the information with other organisations for commercial purposes.

You have the right to see the personal data we process about you, as well as the right of objection, rectification and restriction (to destruction of records only).

If you have any questions or concerns about the way we process your personal data, contact our Data Protection Officer at DPO@n-somerset.gov.uk.