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Privacy Notice - NPT Citizens' Panel

Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council has a Data Protection regime in place to oversee the effective and secure processing of your personal data: in accordance with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation 2016 (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA). You can read the Council’s Privacy Statement.

In providing us with your personal information you hereby acknowledge that Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council is the Data Controller for all the personal information you provide to us (for the purpose of the General Data Protection Regulation 2016 (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA).

As a Data Controller the Council is required under GDPR to inform you which of the Article 6 GDPR “Data Processing Conditions” it is relying upon to lawfully process your personal data. In this respect please be advised that in regards to the data provided by you for the NPT Citizens’ Panel we are relying on the following Article 6 condition:
“The data processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller.” (Article 6(e) GDPR).

We would inform you that under Article 21 GDPR you have the right at any time to object to the Authority about the fact that we are processing your personal data for the purposes of carrying out a public task or exercising our official authority. The following explains how we use your personal information for the NPT Citizens’ Panel (the Panel).

NPT Citizens’ Panel

The Council will create, manage and send out survey questionnaires for the Panel.

The answers you give in the Panel application form and all of the information you give to the Panel’s questionnaires in the future will be used to find out what Neath Port Talbot residents think about council services and other important issues affecting life in Neath Port Talbot.

Why do we hold personal information?

By joining the NPT Citizens’ Panel you acknowledge that the Council will send survey questionnaires to you each time a new NPT Citizens’ Panel questionnaire is published. This could be between one and 12 times per year. We will not use your information for any other purpose other than those identified in this privacy notice.

The Council keeps the following personal information about you to enable us to do this:

  • Your name
  • Your house number and postcode, to help us know what areas our panellists come from and can send you any specific questionnaires that might focus on the area you live in
  • Your email address, so that we can send questionnaires straight to your email inbox
  • Your language preference of English or Welsh, so that we can send questionnaires to you in your preferred language
  • Equalities information about you, to help the Council measure how well we are meeting our obligations under the Equality Act 2010 and the wellbeing of Future Generations Act.

What will we use your information for?

The personal data which we collect from you will be used by the Council for the following purposes:

  • To recruit a panel that is representative of the population of Neath Port Talbot County Borough in terms of characteristics
  • To enable survey data and responses from the panel to be ‘weighted’ to help make the sample data representative of the population
  • To enable analysis to decide if certain issues are impacting more on any specific section of the population of Neath Port Talbot
  • To help the Council determine how well it is meeting its obligations under the Equalities Act (2010) 

Your information will only be used to conduct research projects, for example in the form of survey questionnaires, qualitative in-depth interviews or discussion groups (e.g. focus groups, workshops and forums) and will never be shared for sales or marketing purposes.

We will not pass your email address or details to anyone else other than Opinion Research Services (ORS) who are engaged with us for the purpose of analysing questionnaires or in order to meet legal requirements.

We will periodically be required to provide information to Council and Cabinet meetings which reflects the feedback from the Panel. When we do this we will make the information anonymous. This means it will not include anything that could be used to identify you - such as your name and address, but will include details about our panellists in general, e.g. the number of panellists, the geographical spread of panellists, how many people respond to particular surveys, the percentage of responses in English and Welsh, issues raised by specific age groups etc.

The Council will not use your personal data for the purposes of automated decision making.

How do we store information and who is responsible for it?

The majority of the Council’s corporate information is currently stored within fileservers located within the county borough, however the Council is in the process of moving to O365 which will mean that data will transition to external data centres located within the UK.

When using your personal information, Council employees have a duty of care to you. This includes respecting your right to confidentiality.

Who do we share this information with?

We may share your personal data securely with the following third parties (i.e. persons/bodies/entities outside the Council) in accordance with data sharing arrangements which we have in place with those third parties

Opinion Research Services (ORS)

To analyse questionnaires for the Panel, we use a company called Opinion Research Services (ORS). ORS is an independent social research practice that works across the UK. ORS is not managed by the Council. It is based in Swansea, with data stored on servers located in the UK, so it is covered by the protection of UK law. Your data will only be held by ORS for as long as it is contracted by the Council to work with it.

We will share your personal data securely with ORS and will ensure that such information is protected by way of a GDPR compliant Data Processing Agreement. All ORS data is stored inside the UK and will not be stored or exported overseas. Therefore, it is covered by the protection of UK law, such as the Data Protection Act
2018.

ORS does not copy, modify, or pass the NPT Citizens’ Panel contact lists or questionnaire responses (in part or in total) to any third party. ORS does not collect or use any of the Council’s NPT Citizens’ Panel information for its own purposes. Any data which the Council shares with ORS will be kept private and will belong to the Council.

ORS staff sign a confidentiality agreement when they join ORS. You can read a copy of ORS’s Privacy Notice.

Snap Surveys

Where panellists have elected to take part in online surveys, their information may be collected using a third party webhost owned by Snap Surveys.

Snap Surveys data is stored inside the UK and will not be stored or exported overseas. Therefore, it is covered by the protection of UK law, such as the Data Protection Act 1998. Snap Surveys apply high standards of security to all information they hold, and are ISO 27001:2013 certified, which provides independent confirmation that their information security policies and procedures follow industry best practice.

You can read a copy of Snap Surveys Privacy Policy.

Other

Where panellists have requested paper copies of questionnaires, their address might be shared with a commercial printer to allow bulk printing of forms or letters. All data shared in this way is controlled by contract and such contact details data will be deleted by the contractor once the operation is complete and will not be used for any other purpose.

Your personal information rights

Please be advised that under GDPR individuals are given the following rights in regards to their personal data:

  • i. The right of access to their personal data held by a data controller.
  • ii. The right to have inaccurate data corrected by a data controller.
  • iii. The right to have their data erased (in certain limited circumstances).
  • iv. The right to restrict the processing of their data by a data controller (in certain limited circumstances).
  • v. The right to object to their data being used for direct marketing.
  • vi. The right to data portability (i.e. electronic transfer of data to another data controller). 


Further information on all the above rights may be obtained from the Information Commissioner’s website.

We will respond to your requests promptly.

Retention Period

The personal information collected from you in conjunction with the NPT Citizens’ Panel will be held by the Council, the Snap Webhost and ORS for as long as you remain a member of the Panel.

We will refresh the NPT Citizens’ Panel periodically and will contact panellists every 2 years to ask whether they still wish to remain on the panel.

You can unsubscribe at any time.

In the event that you have any queries regarding our use of your personal data, you wish to have access to the same or you wish to make any complaint regarding the processing of your personal data, please contact the Council’s Data Protection Officer who is the Head of Legal Services, Legal Services Section, Civic Centre, Port Talbot SA13 1PJ.

Please be advised that in the event that you make a request or a complaint to the Council’s Data Protection Officer (above) and you are dissatisfied with the Council’s response you are entitled to complain directly to the Information Commissioner’s Office. Details of the Commissioner’s Office, contact details and further information on your rights may be obtained from the Commissioner’s website.