Communication Service Privacy Policy
About us
The Communications Service at Sheffield City Council provides information, alerts and communications about public services and our work with partner organisations. Our communications cover many channels and forms including, digital e.g. social media, websites, apps and email or offline, e.g. print, direct mail, media (newspapers, radio, television).
Why we collect and use personal data
We collect and use personal data to:
- provide, plan and manage our service
- carry out any other tasks which we have to do by law
- listen to your ideas about our services
- tell you about our services
- evaluate and improve services
We might collect your personal data directly from yourself, from someone acting on your behalf, or from another third party. We might collect this data in person, over the telephone, in writing, electronically, or captured as an image, audio or film recording.
The information we collect is:
- name
- the names of any individual you are acting on behalf of (for example a parent of a child, a carer of a vulnerable adult)
- address
- contact details; names, email, phone number
- photograph/ video
- sound recording
- cookies/ web based technical data
Where communication justifies it, we may collect details of someone’s behaviour, lifestyle, physical or mental health needs.
Lawful basis
In most cases, we rely on “public task” as the lawful basis for processing your personal data. That is, a specific task in the public interest which is laid down by law; or exercising official authority (for example, where the council’s tasks, functions, duties or powers) is laid down by law. We state the specific law, etc, on the council’s Records of Processing Activity and, where appropriate, on the privacy notices of relevant services.
Where we process special category personal data, such as information about health, racial or ethnic origin we do so mostly under reasons of substantial public interest, set out in Part 2 of Schedule 1 of the DPA 2018.
Where the lawful basis for processing your personal data is “consent” we will ensure that we ask for your consent. This may be for the use of your image or a sound recording, or to send certain information via email which you have subscribed to receive. You have the right to withdraw that consent at any time by contacting the Communications Service.
Sharing your information
We share personal data within the council and also with external third parties so we can carry out our work. Internal sharing might include checking information with officers to provide an accurate response to enquiries or ensuring availability for location shooting.
External sharing might be to ensure you receive an appropriate response to an enquiry or distribution of communications e.g. media releases or social media posts.
We will ensure that only the minimum amount is shared.
How long we keep information for
Information is kept for the minimum period we need to use it for and varies depending upon use. For example, information held on our email subscriber system GovDelivery is managed by the user and held as long as the subscriber maintains it. Images of people and accompanying consent forms are kept for 2 years. We can provide information on time periods for holding specific data in the service.
Your data rights
You have the following rights in regard to your personal information, to:
- access copies of any records we hold about you
- have any information we hold about you corrected
- have any information we hold about you deleted or destroyed
- restrict how information we hold about you can be used or shared
- object to information about you being held
- have any information we hold about you transferred to a third party
- challenge decisions relating to you made using automated decision making and profiling (currently we have no services that use automated decision making or profiling for decision making)
Please note there may be times that we cannot fulfil these rights because of legal reasons, but we will always explain why and you can appeal to the Information Commissioner if you are dissatisfied with our decision. Also once data has been shared publicly, e.g. media release, social media post, then we can remove that data from our own channels but it will not be possible for us to remove it from third parties.
If you want to exercise any of the above rights, please make a subject access request.
Who to contact about the way your personal data is handled
If you have any queries, concerns or complaints about the way we process your personal data, including the way we handle information requests, you can contact the Communication Service (communications@sheffield.gov.uk) or the Sheffield City Council Data Protection Officer.
If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are not processing your personal data in accordance with the law you have the right to contact the Information Commissioner’s Office.
This page is the Communication Service Privacy notice. You can find other privacy notices related to Sheffield City Council on our privacy notice page.