How we handle your personal data
You can access our website home page and browse our site without disclosing your personal data. There may be pages on the site that invite visitors to send information via forms or e-mail to enable you to ask for publications or information and advice, or to tell us what you think about particular issues. The owners of this site, Vale of White Horse District Council and South Oxfordshire District Council, take great care of any personal information you give us in this way. In the following paragraphs we set out how any personal information you give us is treated. If you choose to give us information about yourself you will be consenting to the collection, processing and storage of the information you provide.
Before collecting any personal details through its web sites, Vale of White Horse District Council and South Oxfordshire District Council will tell you why we need the information and what it will be used for. You always have the option of declining to give us personal information or data.
Vale of White Horse District Council and South Oxfordshire District Council ensures that only staff that have a business reason to look at your information or data can do so, they cannot look at your information or data for personal reasons or out of curiosity. Vale of White Horse District Council and South Oxfordshire District Council may employ other companies and individuals to do work which may mean they have access to some personal information or data but they have the same restrictions as our own staff and are never allowed to use it for any other purpose. Vale of White Horse District Council and South Oxfordshire District Council will never sell personal information or data or share personal information or data with third parties unrelated to the services we provide unless we are required to do so by law or unless you have told us you consent to our doing this.
Information you provide will be stored by Vale of White Horse District Council and South Oxfordshire District Council on a hosted site and used to process the request; it will be retained for a reasonable period. Where a business transaction is then enacted, commercial records may be retained for up to seven years. Details of any hosted site where information is stored and used by the council will be available on request.
Vale of White Horse District Council and South Oxfordshire District Council have no way of knowing if any person providing information and links through this site is who they say they are. Vale of White Horse District Council and South Oxfordshire District Council will assume all information is genuine and cannot be held responsible for any action taken as a result of relying on it. If you have any reason to think someone has provided information to Vale of White Horse District Council and South Oxfordshire District Council using your identity, please let us know and we will correct or delete the information. You have the right to request us to remove personal data from our website at any time. To do so, please contact us.
Should you have any concern regarding collection, processing, storage or disclosure of information submitted via this website please contact Vale of White Horse District Council and South Oxfordshire District Council. You have the right to ask for a copy of the personal information or data Vale of White Horse District Council and South Oxfordshire District Council holds about you. You will be asked to confirm your identity and pay a fee, currently £10. If the information we hold about you is wrong you have the right to ask us to correct it.
Council’s use of personal data
We may use the personal and business data collected to:
- process your request, for example, to find new premises
- communicate with you and provide information about our enterprise zones and services and those of our partner companies and to administer your account
- send you marketing communications about products, activities, promotions or other matters that we feel may be of interest or use to you
- contact you about a submission you have made or content you have provided
- create a log-in and password for you
- analyse your use of our websites, our apps and response to our communications and improve the services we offer, including personalising our communications with you.
Vale of White Horse District Council and South Oxfordshire District Council is required by law to protect the public funds it administers. It may share information provided to it with other bodies responsible for auditing, or administering public funds, or where undertaking a public function, in order to prevent and detect fraud.
The Cabinet Office is responsible for carrying out data matching exercises.
Data matching involves comparing computer records held by one body against other computer records held by the same or another body to see how far they match. This is usually personal information. Computerised data matching allows potentially fraudulent claims and payments to be identified. Where a match is found it may indicate that there is an inconsistency which requires further investigation. No assumption can be made as to whether there is fraud, error or other explanation until an investigation is carried out.
We participate in the Cabinet Office’s National Fraud Initiative: a data matching exercise to assist in the prevention and detection of fraud. We are required to provide particular sets of data to the Minister for the Cabinet Office for matching for each exercise, as detailed here.
The use of data by the Cabinet Office in a data matching exercise is carried out with statutory authority under Part 6 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. It does not require the consent of the individuals concerned under the Data Protection Act 1998.
Data matching by the Cabinet Office is subject to a Code of Practice.
View further information on the Cabinet Office’s legal powers and the reasons why it matches particular information.
If you would like more information on data matching at Vale of White Horse District Council and South Oxfordshire District Council please contact us.
Interactive areas
The website may include bulletin boards, discussion groups and other public areas that allow feedback to Vale of White Horse District Council and South Oxfordshire District Council and interaction between users. Vale of White Horse District Council and South Oxfordshire District Council do not control the information posted to these areas but they do expect contributors to comply with the following rules and also to any additional rules that may be introduced for a particular forum (the need to register for instance)
Vale of White Horse District Council and South Oxfordshire District Council may delete, move or edit any messages it deems unsuitable without giving a reason. You are solely responsible for the content of your messages and agree to indemnify Vale of White Horse District Council and South Oxfordshire District Council for any loss that we may suffer because of your action.
By submitting messages to our site you are giving Vale of White Horse District Council and South Oxfordshire District Council the right to reproduce, adapt, make available, distribute and sub-license the message in whole or in part and in print or electronic form. Any message you post must not:
- contain advertising for goods or services or try to make business use of the site
- contain anything unlawful, threatening, abusive, libellous, indecent
- mislead others about who has posted the message
- use language that offends in any way, in particular anything that is of a racist, sexist, nationalistic, cultural or religious nature
- contain a virus or any other harmful software
Link to SODC – http://www.southoxon.gov.uk/about-us/contact-us/requesting-information/data-protection-0
Link to VWHDC – http://www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/about-us/contact-us/requesting-information/data-protection