Privacy Policy

We need to collect and hold information about you, in order to:

• deliver public services
• confirm your identity to provide some services
• contact you by post, email or telephone
• understand your needs to provide the services that you request
• understand what we can do for you and inform you of other relevant services and benefits
• obtain your opinion about our services
• help us to build up a picture of how we are performing at delivering services to you and what services the people of Fife need
• process financial transactions
• prevent and detect fraud and corruption in the use of public funds
• allow us to undertake statutory functions efficiently and effectively
• make sure we meet our statutory obligations including those related to diversity and equality.

We may not be able to provide you with a product or service unless we have enough information, or your permission to use that information.

We will use the information you provide in a manner that conforms to the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.

We will process your information for the following purposes:-

• for the service you requested, and to monitor and improve the council’s performance in responding to your request
• to allow us to be able to communicate and provide services and benefits appropriate to your needs
• to ensure that we meet our legal obligations
• where necessary for the law enforcement functions
• to prevent and detect fraud or crime
• to process financial transactions including grants, payments and benefits involving the council, or where we are acting on behalf of other government bodies, e.g. Department for Work and Pensions
• to collect monies owed to us
• where necessary to protect individuals from harm or injury
• for purposes connected to the delivery of the service such as IT support; procurement; legal/financial advice and support and the delivery of internal audit and risk management
• to take decisions at the appropriate level in terms of the Council’s Scheme of Governance - either by Committee or under delegated officer authority
• to allow the statistical analysis of data so we can plan the provision of services
• to process and respond to requests for information under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002; the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation/Data Protection Act 2018
• to process and respond to complaints made to Fife Council and to process petitions submitted by third parties to the Council.

The Council will not keep your information for longer than is necessary.

In some instances the law sets the length of time information has to be kept. Where the law does not set a period, the Council will keep your information for no longer than it is required for the purpose for which it was collected.

Because these periods can vary, there is no single answer to how long we will keep your information. To find out how long the Council keeps information for different purposes, please read Security and Compliance

In addition, there are some other factors that can influence how long we keep your information. These include

• your personal data rights (see below)
• where a record containing your information forms part of evidence gathered as part of an investigation*
• where a record containing your information is selected for permanent preservation*.

*Where this happens, safeguards are put in place to ensure that your information is secure.

We will pass your information to other people and organisations that provide the service on behalf of the Council. These providers are obliged to keep your details securely, and use them only to carry out the service.

We will disclose information to other partners where it is necessary, either to comply with a legal obligation, or where permitted under the UK General Data Protection Regulation/Data Protection Act 2018, e.g. where the disclosure is necessary for the purposes of the prevention and/or detection of crime. This includes any disclosure to statutory regulators such as the Office of the Scottish Information Commissioner; the Information Commissioner’s Office and the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman.

We may disclose information when necessary to prevent risk of harm to an individual.

We provide further information of what information is shared with other organisations including suppliers within specific Council services privacy notices. See "Services Privacy Notices" below.

In general, Fife Council processes personal data within the UK however we may process your information overseas, such as when using web services that are hosted in the EEA but only when we are satisfied that both the party which handles the data and the country it is processing it in provide adequate safeguards for personal privacy.

You have a number of rights in relation to your personal data.

You have the right to request that Fife Council stop processing your personal data in relation to any council service. However, this may cause delays or prevent us from delivering a service to you. Where possible we will seek to comply with your request but we may be required to hold or process information to comply with a legal requirement.

You have the right to object to Fife Council processing your personal data where we are performing a task in the public interest/exercise of public authority.

We try to ensure that any information we hold about you is correct. There may be situations where you find the information we hold is no longer accurate and you have the right to request that this is corrected.

If we have asked for your consent in order to process your personal data you can withdraw this consent in whole or in part at any time.

Find out more information about your rights.

You are legally entitled to request access to any information about you that we hold, and a copy. This is known as a subject access request. Further information can be found on the Information requests page, where a request can be made online, or email information.requests@fife.gov.uk. Alternatively, you can write to us at the Information Management & Request Team, Fife Council, Fife House, Glenrothes, Fife, KY7 5HX.

We will continually review and update this privacy notice to reflect changes in our services and feedback from service users, as well as to comply with changes in the law.

Fife Council is required by law to protect the public funds it administers. We may use any of the information you provide to us for the prevention and detection of fraud. We may also share this information with other bodies responsible for auditing, administering public funds, or where undertaking a public function, in order to prevent and detect fraud. This includes the Cabinet Office, the Department for Work and Pensions, other local authorities, HM Revenue and Customs, Audit Scotland and the Police.

This is being carried out in terms of the Data Protection Act 2018, Schedule 2, Part 1, para 2 and/or 3 as explained below:

• Schedule 2, Para 2 - Exemption for the purposes of the prevention or detection of crime, the apprehension or prosecution of offenders or the assessment or collection of tax or duty
• Schedule 2, Para 3 - Exemption for personal data which consists of a classification applied to a data subject as part of a risk assessment system operated by government, local authority or another authority administering housing benefit for crime and taxation purposes.

Data matching may also be used to assist the council in identifying individuals who may need additional support if an actual or potential incident impacts Fife. This information may also need to be shared with partner agencies in responding to the incident.

The Test and Protect privacy notice is available here https://www.fife.gov.uk/privacy/testandprotect

We will inform you if we record or monitor any telephone calls you make to us. Calls made direct to, or from, our Customer Service Centre are recorded. We do not record any financial card details if you then make payments by telephone. If the call is transferred to a member of staff outside the Customer Service Centre, the recording stops. Calls may be recorded if telephoning direct to other service teams on alternative numbers.

These records will be used, to increase your security, for our record keeping of the transaction and for our staff training purposes.

We use technologies to improve our website and the service being delivered to you. The personal data we collect from you for this purpose includes:

• your Internet Protocol (IP) address, and details of which version of web browser you used
• information on how you use the site, using cookies and page tagging techniques

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.

If you chose to opt in to Analytics cookies to help us improve our website and service the data will be anonymised before being used for this purpose.

For more detailed information about the cookies we use, see our Cookies page.

We have an Information Governance Framework that includes a Data Protection Policy and a set of Information Security policies. These define our commitments and responsibilities to your privacy and cover a range of information and technology security areas. We provide training to staff who handle personal information and treat it as a disciplinary matter if they misuse or do not look after your personal information properly.

We will not keep your information longer than it is needed or where the law states how long this should be kept. We will dispose of paper records or delete any electronic personal information in a secure way.

There are specific privacy notices for Council Services you may access, or applications and enquiries you make. These privacy notices will be made available to you at the point you access the Service, application or enquiry.

Full list of service privacy notices

To ensure fairness and transparency in data processing, we need to make you aware that we may share personal information with Audit Scotland, the Auditor General, the Accounts Commission or one of the audit firms appointed by them. We have a lawful reason for providing this information to those organisations in terms of UK GDPR – Article 6 (1c): “processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject.”.

The privacy notice for Audit Scotland, the Auditor General, the Accounts Commission is available on the Audit Scotland website – www.audit-scotland.gov.uk.