Privacy notice

We are dedicated to respecting your privacy and safeguarding your personal data in compliance with the Data Protection Act.

Who we are and how to contact us

The London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) as Data Controller is responsible for collecting and processing most of the personal data about health and social care. Our Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) registration number is Z5124889.

Any questions regarding our privacy practices should be sent by email the Data Protection Officer for London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham:

email: information.management@lbhf.gov.uk
write to: The Data Protection Officer, Hammersmith & Fulham Council, Town Hall, King Street, Hammersmith, London, W6 9JU

Visit your data rights on the H&F Council website for information on how to contact us to exercise your data rights (for example, to access your data by making a subject access request (SAR)) or if you’re unhappy with how we use your data or comply with your data rights.

What we collect and process

We collect and process a range of personal data about you.

All the personal data we process is data you’ve given directly to us. This could be when you contact us about our services, our forms or when you provide feedback.

What we do with it

If necessary, we’ll use any of the personal data we hold for the following purposes:

to give you the best service by making sure we contact you when you need us to
to maintain and upgrade the systems we use to process your data
to check the quality and improve existing services and help research and plan new services

Who we share it with

We share your data within the council where it’s necessary to deliver a service.

We may also share your data with:

our partners – we may work with other organisations like the Police, Health services, other public authorities, voluntary organisations, to provide services to you or others. Sometimes we may need to share your data with our partners to provide these services. We’ll only share with them the data they need and we’ll set-out what they can use it for in an information sharing agreement.
other parties – we will only share your data with other parties where we have a legal basis for sharing it with them. We’ll let you know if we need to share your data with someone you wouldn’t expect unless doing this would be prejudicial or a disproportionate effort.

We process all of your personal data within the United Kingdom and European Economic Area (EEA). Where it’s necessary to process your data outside of the UK/EEA we make sure there are appropriate safeguards in place.

How long we keep it

We will only keep your information for as long as is required by law or in line with our stated retention schedule.
When we no longer need your data, we’ll dispose of it securely or, if it’s of historic interest, we’ll transfer it to our local archives service.

Keeping your data safe and accurate

We take care to keep the data we hold about you (on paper and electronically) safe, and we only make it available to those with a right to see it. Examples of our security include:

training our staff so they’re aware how to safely handle information
controlling access to our systems and networks so only those that should have access do have access
encrypting data that needs protection so it can’t be read without a specific key (for example, a password or ‘cypher’)
pseudonymising data (for example, where we replace your name with a code) so someone can work on your data but not know it’s about you
regularly testing our IT systems and ways of working, including installing the latest software security updates so we reduce our vulnerabilities

We ask you to help us keep your data safe by making sure you let us know if your contact details change (for example, if you move home, change your phone number or email address or something else we need to keep in touch with you).

We will do our best to keep information about you accurate and up-to-date, and would like you to do the same.

What are your rights?

For more information on your rights and how to exercise them, visit these pages on the H&F Council website: Your data rights – what they are and Your data rights – how to exercise them.

For who to contact if you’re unhappy, please see Your data rights – who to contact if you’re unhappy.

What if this notice changes?

If we make a big change to what personal data we process, how or why we process it, or who processes it, we’ll update this notice. We may also contact you using other communication channels to make you aware of the changes.