This privacy notice is here to tell you what information we collect about you, what we do with that information and why we do it, who we share it with, and how we protect your privacy.

This notice covers all personal data collected by the council / Mott MacDonald Limited and where we tell other organisations to collect information for us. This is the same whether the information is collected by letter, email, face to face, telephone or online.

Please also see: https://www.mottmac.com/privacy-policy

Personal information
Personal information is information that identifies a living person. That can be obvious information like name and address, or it may be something like an IP address or an identifier like an NHS number.

This includes information you tell us about yourself, information we are given by other people or organisations, or what we learn by having you as a resident or client.
Some information is considered more sensitive or special:

  • sexuality and sexual health
  • religious or philosophical beliefs
  • ethnicity
  • physical or mental health
  • trade union membership
  • political opinion
  • genetic/biometric data
  • criminal history

We must take extra care when collecting and using these types of information.

Why we need your personal information
We use personal information in many ways, either because the law says we must, or because the law allows us to, so that we can deliver council services. We use personal information:

  • to provide services and support to you. For example, you give us information on a benefit claim form so that we can handle your benefit claim.
  • to protect and support people living and working in our borough (safeguarding).
  • manage our services to see how we can best deliver services and support to you, and make sure we’re spending public money in the best way.
  • to monitor how well we dealt with your request, for admin purposes and to handle any complaints.
  • so that we can tell you about and provide services that suit your needs. For example, providing assistance to new parents, or telling you about any free services or additional help available to you.
  • because the law says we must. For example, the council must monitor how well it meets the requirements of laws on equalities and health and safety.
  • where we need to for legal duties. The council has responsibilities for areas like licensing of premises (such as pubs), planning enforcement, trading standards and council tax where we legally must process personal information. Sometimes this is information provided by the individual and sometimes other people or organisations have provided information about individuals, for example if someone makes a complaint to us.
  • where we must process personal information so that we comply with legal obligations for the prevention and detection of crime. For example, investigating fraud against the council or working with the police.
  • so that we can make financial transactions for things like grants, payments and benefits involving the council, or where the council is acting for another government body like the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
  • for statistical and research purposes.

Why we can use your personal information
We can only collect and use (process) personal information if we have a proper reason or 'legal basis' to do so. In most cases, our legal basis is because there is a law or laws that require us to deliver a service. We call this a statutory duty.

The legal reasons for using personal information are:

  • it is necessary to undertake our statutory duties
  • it is required by law
  • you have entered into a contract with us
  • it is necessary to deliver health or social care services
  • you, or your legal representative, have given consent
  • you have made your information publicly available
  • it is necessary for legal cases
  • it is necessary for employment purposes
  • it is necessary to protect someone in an emergency
  • it is to the benefit of society as a whole
  • it is necessary to protect public health
  • it is necessary for archiving, research, or statistical purposes

Who we share information with
We do not sell your personal information to anyone. We don't share your personal information with any people or organisations unless they are providing services to us under contract or where providing that information is allowed by, or required by, law.

Personal information we collect is routinely shared between council services as well as with other organisations such as government bodies, the police, health & social care organisations and educational establishments like schools. We do this where have a legal basis to do so.

We consider Barnet to be a ‘commissioning council’, where we work with partners like the health service, or private companies to deliver the best service that is also value for money.

Our partners include Barnet Homes for housing services and Your Choice Barnet for specialist social care and support to adults. Companies that we ask to work on our behalf include Capita for the Customer Support Group (CSG) contract, who provide services such as HR and Revenues and Benefits, or the joint venture company Re Limited, for services such as planning and environmental health.

We only share information with these organisations where the law says we must, or where the law says that we can. We require these organisations to follow the law, including data protection laws, and we make routine checks before information is shared, to make sure that these organisations have adequate systems and procedures in place to protect your information.

What we do with your information
There are some things we do across the whole council that use your personal information. and those are listed below. We also use different information for delivery of different services and to make this information easy to use, on the left-hand side you will see categories of the services that we deliver. This is so that you can easily identify which processes affect you.

Reviewing and improving our services
We regularly use personal information to look at how people are using our services and whether we are performing well. This may be assessments that we do within our services, or we might contact you to ask you for feedback on our services.

This helps us to improve the way we deliver services to you, and to plan the best way to deliver services to people.

Statutory Returns and Public Registers
A statutory return is when the law says that we must provide specific information about you to another organisation. An example of this would be the pupil census data that the council must provide to the Department of Education.

We are also required to publish some information or make it available on a public register.

Data Matching (comparing information from different sources)
We routinely check information we hold about you across different areas of the council. We also sometimes collect information about you from other organisations (such as another council). We do this so that we can:

  • check that the information we hold about you is accurate
  • prevent or detect crime
  • protect public funds from fraud
  • meet our legal obligations
  • We may provide information about you to other organisations (such as another council) so that they can do these things too.

Anti-Fraud and Crime Prevention
We use personal information across all our services to help to prevent and detect crime and fraud and to protect the public funds that we manage. The law allows us to use and share personal information so that we can do that. Our anti-fraud team does much of this work and we also share information with organisations like the police or the DWP, or professional bodies like those that regulate a particular type of job, such as social workers or solicitors.

National Fraud Initiative
We provide information to the Cabinet Office for the National Fraud Initiative. This is a data matching exercise to assist in the prevention and detection of fraud and the use of data by the Cabinet Office in a data matching exercise is carried out with statutory authority under its powers in Part 6 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. We are required to take part and provide personal data to the Cabinet Officer for data matching.

All bodies participating in the Cabinet Office’s data matching exercises receive a report of matches that they should investigate, so they can detect instances of fraud, over- or under-payments and other errors, to take remedial action and update their records accordingly.

From 1 April 2015 the National Fraud Initiative has been conducted using the data matching powers bestowed on the Minister for the Cabinet Office by Part 6 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 (LAAA). Previous exercises were conducted by the Audit Commission under Part IIA of the Audit Commission Act 1998.

Links
Mott MacDonald Limited and London Borough of Barnet may provide links to other useful websites. Please be aware that external sites may have different security and privacy policies to ours, over which we have no control. These other websites may provide opinions, recommendations or other information from various individuals, organisations or companies.

The links are provided solely as a convenience to you and not as an endorsement or recommendation by Mott MacDonald Limited and London Borough of Barnet of the content on such third-party websites. In providing such links, we do not investigate the content of such information. Mott MacDonald Limited and London Borough of Barnet does not endorse, guarantee, warrant or recommend the accuracy of such information or necessarily subscribe to any such opinions or recommendations. If you decide to access linked third-party websites, you do so at your own risk. Further, to the extent that you make use of any link to any other website on the Internet, the disclosure, reproduction, sale or distribution of information contained thereon may be prohibited.

Privacy and Security Policy
We are not able to identify you or gain personal information unless you submit this information using one of the on-line response forms. Any information submitted to us from an on-line response form on the site will be used by staff at Mott MacDonald Limited and London Borough of Barnet to respond to your enquiry, and in accordance with the UK Data Protection Act 1998 you agree to Mott MacDonald Limited and London Borough of Barnet processing any such information. We never release personal details to any companies, organisations or individuals without your prior consent, except as required by law, or similar circumstances. However, as with any Internet transmission that is not encrypted, the risk of disclosure to unintended third parties exists.

Mott MacDonald Limited and London Borough of Barnet reserves the right to use automatic tracking systems on its site, collecting information about visitors without identifying individuals, so that we can collate statistical information. This information is useful in monitoring our effectiveness in promoting the site, reviewing its technical specification and assessing its usefulness.

This privacy policy applies to this site only and does not extend to any sites linked from the Barnet Local Offer site.