Privacy notice

Our privacy policy includes how we use or share your information, our disclaimer and copyright information.

When we use your personal data, Medway Council is what we call the data controller.

As the data controller, we must:

  • only keep your data that we need to provide services and do what the law says we must
  • keep your records safe and accurate
  • only keep your data as long as we have to
  • collect, store and use your data in a way that does not break any data protection laws.

To help us, you can tell us: 

  • when any of your details change; and
  • if any of the information we hold on you is wrong

View our privacy notices by service

What personal data is

Personal data is information about a living person that means we can work out who they are such as name, address, telephone number, date of birth, bank details. This can include written letters, emails, photographs, audio recordings and video recordings.

Some data is called special category data which is more sensitive, and we have to look after it more carefully. This includes details of ethnic origin, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, trade union membership, health data, and biometric data such as fingerprints, facial recognition and genetic data such as DNA. 

Why we collect and store personal data

For some of our services, we need to use your personal data so we can contact you or provide the service. We can use your personal data under many different laws.

The main ones for the council are the Local Government Acts and the Localism Act 2011, but there are hundreds more. The government put together a list of all statutory duties of local authorities in 2011.

Some of these laws may have been updated since then, and new ones added. You can see more details for each service area below.

In many cases there is a law that says we must or we can process your data and we can do so without your consent or permission.

For some services we process your data under a contract such as your leisure centre membership, concert ticket sales.

Where we do not directly provide the service, we may need to pass your personal data onto the organisations that do. These providers are under contract and have to keep your details safe and secure, and use them only to provide the service.

Using your personal data

We will use your data to:

  • provide council services and anything we must do by law.
  • carry out our regulatory, licensing and enforcement roles which we have to do by law
  • make payments, grants and benefits and spot fraud
  • listen to your ideas about council services
  • tell you about council services.

View more detail about how our services use your data and why in our privacy notices for council service areas.

Joined-up services within the council

We share your data between services within the council so that we can keep our information on you as up-to-date as possible and so that we can improve our services to you. For example, if you tell the housing team you have moved, they will pass this information on to other parts of the council such as the council tax team.

Staff can only see your data if they need it to do their job.

Changes to this privacy notice

We keep our privacy notice under regular review. This privacy notice is v1.0 and was last updated on 24 May 2018.