Environment and Commercial services privacy notice

Everything we do with information about people, including how we collect it and who we share it with, has to comply with the Data Protection Act and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that came into force in May 2018. A key part of this is being open about how we use information and also what rights you have in respect of information we hold about you.

This privacy notice gives information about how the Council’s Environment and Commercial services use personal data. The functions in this service include

• Trading Standards – a service jointly delivered with Peterborough City Council to protect the rural economy from animal disease outbreaks, act as a primary responder in the case of such an outbreak, and uphold animal health and welfare standards. Ensure consumer safety through its enforcement and advisory activities in the areas of product safety, food safety, underage sales, upholding the integrity of the food chain, and effective explosives and petroleum licensing. Protect the most vulnerable from rogue trading activity and bring to justice those who deliberately flout trading legislation for their own gains. Support economic growth through advice and support to businesses.
• County Planning, Minerals and Waste service which assess, make and enforce decisions on planning applications for developments such as mineral extraction and mineral processing, waste disposal and recycling/recovery and the County Council’s own services e.g. schools, libraries and roads;
• Flood Risk and Biodiversity service which work to manage the risk of surface water flooding to communities and to protect, enhance and promote Cambridgeshire’s natural environment.
• Historic Environment service which manage finds and records from the County’s archaeological excavations , maintains the Cambridgeshire Historic Environment Record and processes Treasure finds;
• Energy Investment Unit which works to reduce consumption, generate renewable energy and to support the development of a low carbon economy using our assets;
• Waste Management service which delivers waste and recycling treatment services for residents and businesses throughout Cambridgeshire. The five District Councils are the Waste Collection Authorities who are responsible for providing the waste collection service to Cambridgeshire residents; and
• Traded Services such as our Outdoor Education Centres which offer residential and day outdoor learning programmes to schools, young people and communities.

If anything in this notice is not clear, or if you have further queries, please get in contact with the Council’s Data Protection Officer using the details at the end of this notice.

What information do we hold

We collect information about people who contact the Council to: report a compliance or safety issue, make or respond to a planning application, use our services, become involved in any of our projects or programmes, enter into legal agreements, request information, complain or comment on these services in general or as part of a consultation. The information we collect varies according the purpose of the contact.

The information we hold may include:

• Your name
• Your address
• Your telephone number(s)
• Your email address
• If you have paid for something, payment details (card numbers etc.) which are held securely and encrypted in the Council’s Financial systems
• Vehicle registration number – to share with our waste disposal contractors when you request a disposal permit or complete a disclaimer form
• Information about your land or property for example about its flood risk or about related planning applications
• School pupil lists
• Medical and dietary needs to ensure we deliver Outdoor Learning programmes which are considerate of our customer needs

Why do we have it and what do we use it for

The work of our Environment and Commercial Services is governed by over 100 pieces of legislation, which requires us to provide the kind of service we have listed above, in Cambridgeshire. 

Our legal basis for processing personal information is the performance of our public tasks under these pieces of legislation.

Some services might collect your personal information in order to keep you informed about projects and investigations you are interested in, or to enforce or ensure compliance with statutory functions. We will not pass your personal details to third parties without your consent if there is no requirement for us to share these otherwise. For example if you are involved with a conservation project we may have your personal details to contact you about the project but we will not pass these on to anyone else without your consent.

The information we collect and store is also used to provide an auditable record of service delivery and enables us to contact people initiating reports/issues to request further information or provide updates.

Whenever we collect information, we always limit this to only the details that might be needed and we ensure that it is used, and stored, safely and securely. We require anyone we share information with, or who uses it on our behalf, to do so too. All staff have received training on data protection and information security.

Who we share information with and why

In order to deliver a range of environmental and commercial services, to undertake our statutory and non-statutory duties and for us to deliver associated projects or programmes, it is often necessary for us to share information across the Council, with our Contractors or Agents, with Elected Councillors and Parish Councils, landowners and with other partner agencies and government departments including:

• Animal Plant Agency, DEFRA, the Environment Agency, the Food Standards Agency, Ministry for Housing Communities and Local Government, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy;
• ALGAO (Association of Local Government Archaeology Officers), Cambridgeshire Flood Risk Management Partnership;
• Contractors working for us such as our waste contractor, Thalia; our highways contractor, Milestone Infrastructure and our energy performance contractor Bouygues Energies & Services.
• National Trading Standards
• Peterborough City Council because our Trading Standards function is delivered jointly with Peterborough City Council as a joint 'Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Trading Standards” team, and the planning policy for Minerals and Waste contained within a joint plan for both authorities; and
• Wildlife Trust, Historic England, Natural England, Woodland Trust, and the National Trust.
• Water companies
• Other local authorities for planning, archaeological or coroners’ services

Other enforcement agencies and local authorities where breaches of legislation are suspected, or where service level agreements are in place to provide services for them

When we publish information in public we will follow procedures that we have in place to remove personal data associated with the record wherever possible.

How long we keep hold of information for

We only keep information for as long as it is needed. This will be based on either a legal requirement (where a law says we have to keep information for a specific period of time) or accepted business practice. This is set out in our retention schedule. Personal information relating to planning applications, ordinary watercourse consents and archaeological finds is not destroyed because it may be relevant to legal proceedings in the future.

Information supplied as part of our work delivering the Portable Antiquities Scheme and also for the collection and storage of archaeological artefacts will be retained permanently as these details form part of the archaeological record and also for evidence that the finds have been handled and/or acquired appropriately. Such information will not be passed to third parties for marketing purposes and access to this data by researchers will be subject to a data protection agreement.

What rights you have

Under Data Protection Legislation you have the following rights:

• Right of access (to receive a copy of your personal data);
• Right to rectification (to request data is corrected if inaccurate);
• Right to erasure (to request that data is deleted);
• Right to restrict processing (to request we don’t use your data in a certain way);
• Right to data portability (in some cases, you can ask to receive a copy of your data in a commonly-used electronic format so that it can be given to someone else);
• Right to object (generally to make a complaint about any aspect of our use of your data); and
• Right to have explained if there will be any automated decision-making, including profiling, based on your data and for the logic behind this to be explained to you.

Any such request can be submitted to the Data Protection Officer. Whether we can agree to your request will depend on the specific circumstances and if we cannot then we will explain the reasons why.

If you are unhappy with any aspect of how your information has been collected and/or used, you can make a complaint to the Data Protection Officer.

You can also report your concerns to the Information Commissioner’s Office.