Privacy Notice - Customer Surveys

The purpose of this Privacy Notice is to explain how and for what purposes we process your personal data. It applies to personal data that is processed electronically and on paper. 

Why we are collecting your data?

In line with our promise outlined within our corporate plan we will listen to and work with our communities when making decisions, developing policies and designing services.

Basildon Borough Council want to deliver the best service possible to our customers, therefore we need to use information and feedback provided by customers to manage the quality of our services. The information we collect will be used to understand the demographics of our customers, capture their preferences, to improve customer satisfaction and to improve service delivery.

Information Collected

• Name and Contact Details
• Family Details
• Signature
• Images
• Health Information
• Sexual Orientation
• Web Data (eg. location data, IP address, cookies)
• Racial and ethnicity data

Generally our customer surveys will be anonymised. Forms will be used to capture your interest in taking part in activities to capture customer feedback. We will need to capture your name and contact details to follow-up these expressions of interest to participate in specific events arranged to capture your feedback.

If applicable we may ask for information relating to your protected characteristics, this is only to ensure equality through measuring the results received. This personal information will be used to establish if the responses received relating to a customer survey / form represent the identified demographic characteristics of the residents living in the borough.

The data is collected through:

• Surveys / forms, which can be completed using the following contact channels;
• Emails
• Post
• Website
• Phone
• SMS

The basis for the processing

• Explicit consent: the individual has given explicit consent for the Council to process their personal data for a specific purpose.

Who your information will be shared with

• All departments within Basildon Borough Council, as appropriate to the results of completed surveys or forms
• We may use your customer feedback  anonymously for marketing and communication material
• We have arrangements with a range of IT providers who support the Council's IT systems and services, therefore your data may be accessed by these suppliers. Where we have these arrangements there is always a contractual agreement with them to ensure they comply with the Data Protection Law.

We will never sell your data, however it may be shared with third parties to:

• Comply with legal obligations and legislative requirements.
• Help business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors to deliver any contract we enter with them or you
• To help if there is need of any professional or legal advice on a matter relating to you.
• To help prevent fraud and/or tackle crime.
• To improve and optimise the performance of our services.

Provide accurate information

We need to hold accurate and up to date information about you so that we can deliver appropriate services. If any of your details change, you need to tell us as soon as possible so that we can update your records.

We will not:

• Use your information for marketing or sales purposes without your prior explicit consent.
• Send or store your data abroad unless it meets the requirements of the Data Protection regulations.
• Make decisions about you based on automated processing.

How long will we hold your data for?

We will keep all submitted customer surveys / forms which relate to the process of capturing customer feedback for a maximum of 1 year from the date they are received.

The council has the right to continue to hold anonymised data as there will be no way of identifying individuals personal information from the analysis created using the results of a customer survey / form being submitted by a customer. This analysis will be deleted as per the Council's general retention policy.

Any analysis conducted following customers submitting their response, that includes personal data is to be deleted after one year of creation / publication.

Your rights

You have the right to access the personal information we hold about you.  Any access requests are free of charge.
If the information we hold about you is inaccurate, you have a right to have this corrected and you have the right to request completion of incomplete data.
You have the right to ask us to erase your personal data in certain circumstances ('right to be forgotten').

You have the right to ask us to stop or restrict the processing of your personal data, in certain circumstances.  Where possible, we will seek to comply with your request, but we may need to hold or process information to comply with a legal requirement.

You can make any of these requests by:

• Email: Data Protection Officer (opens new window)
• Phone: 01268 533333
• Letter to:

If you are dissatisfied with how we have used your personal information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, by:

• Email: casework@ico.org.uk (opens new window)
• Phone: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745
• Letter to:

Further independent advice about data protection, privacy and data sharing issues is available from the Information Commissioner's Office, see:

• Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) (opens new window).