Privacy

Privacy notice for survey respondents and those involved in customer research

We will process any personal data we collect through our research (customer satisfaction survey, user research mailing list, Advisory Forum) in accordance with current data protection laws.

This notice is separate to how we deal with your information as part of an investigation of your complaint.

We collect and process information to help us to understand our customer demographic. This may include,

 

  • opinions about our service via our customer satisfaction survey
  • name, address, sex, age, qualifications, employment status
  • marriage or civil partnership
  • pregnancy or maternity

We also process special categories of personal data to meet our obligations under the Equality Act 2010. This may include,

  • physical or mental health
  • racial or ethnic origins
  • religion or belief
  • sexual orientation
  • gender identity

This information may be collected in digital or paper format.

Part of our public task requires us to gather information about the experience of those using the service. We therefore process personal data to help us improve how we work. The information is not seen by the original case officer. Where the research is completed by a survey, a separate team will analyse the results. We report results on our website annually.

The answers to all the questions on the survey are voluntary, but the more information you are willing to provide, the better we will be able to ensure our service can be accessed equally by everyone.

Those taking part in user research or the Advisory Forum will have their views shared with the LGSCO staff members involved in that research.

The lawful basis we rely on for processing your personal data is Article 6(1)(e) – public task.

The digital survey information is collected and uploaded to a secure web-based system, provided by our supplier, a company called SmartSurvey. Their privacy policy can be found on their website.

We gather the data from the digital and paper survey replies to create quarterly reports for internal use. We also report results on our website annually. These reports do not contain any personal data.

Personal data of those on the user research mailing list and Advisory Forum, is only shared with those involved in the research, and the finance team if travel expenses are to be paid.

We take the security of your data seriously. We have internal policies and controls in place to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed. We also make sure our employees only access your data in the proper performance of their duties. For more details see our Information Management Policies.

Information which is processed by the third party is held on a secure web-based system. The processing is done so on the basis of written instructions and the third party is under a duty of confidentiality and are required to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation 2016 and Data Protection Act 2018 in their own right.

The survey runs annually from May to June the following year. We store the digital survey responses on the secure web-based system provided by SmartSurvey. The paper survey responses are scanned when received and transferred to our own server. Once our survey closes for that year, data is transferred to our own server for analysis. At that point, the original data and any paper copies are destroyed.

The equality information we collect is anonyimised within five months of the survey closing.

The remaining data is stored for five years from the date it was collected.

Personal data of subscribers to the user research mailing list, and members of the Advisory Forum is held on our server.  The applicant details are held for two years. Forum data, including the members log, correspondence and video imagery, is stored for three years.

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