Privacy Notice

Latest Version updated: 20 April 2018

By reading and continuing to use this website, you agree to the following conditions of use.

About AshfordFOR and Ashford Borough Council

This site is managed by Ashford Borough Council, Civic Centre, Tannery Lane, Ashford Kent TN23 1PL. Ashford Borough Council’s Data Protection Officer can be contacted at: The Data Protection Officer, Ashford Borough Council, Civic Centre, Tannery Lane, Ashford TN23 1PL.

Disclaimer

Ashford Borough Council makes every effort to ensure that information on this website is accurate and up-to-date. However, we cannot accept responsibility for any loss or inconvenience caused by reliance on information on this site.

Privacy Policy

You should note that Ashford Borough Council as a public authority is subject to the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“the Act”) and may be obliged under the Act to disclose information to a third party who has made an information request, subject to the applicability of any of the exemptions under the Act. You should identify any information which you provide to us which is of a particularly confidential or sensitive nature.

This privacy policy demonstrates the commitment of Ashford Borough Council and its partners to the privacy of your data. We will, as far as possible, safeguard the privacy of your data whilst providing a personalised and valuable service.

This privacy policy applies to all information we hold about you or your business/organisation, including “personal data” as defined in the General Data Protection Regulation or any relevant implementation legislation.

If you have any requests concerning information about you or your business/organisation or any queries relating to this privacy policy, please contact our Data Protection Officer.

Information Collected

We may collect and hold the following information about you and your business / organisation:

  • Information about your visit to our website, including details about your computer, your browser and how you use this website (please see the Cookie Usage section of this policy.
  • E-mail address, when subscribing to our Newsletter
  • Name, company name, e-mail address, phone number, and any details you may give us when contacting us via our Contact Form.
  • Any information (name, company name, e-mail address, details of enquiry etc) you send us via e-mail.
  • Any personal details provided in your email or letters to us,
  • Records of any services we or our partners provide for your company/business/organisation.

If you contact us for any reason, we may retain copies of any letters, emails or online forms and may record telephone conversations with you.

Why and how we use your data

Under the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we are required to provide you with the lawful bases under which we are processing your data. By signing up to our mailing list or emailing us you are consenting to the processing of your personal data and as such consent is the legal basis being utilised. Ordinarily we will only hold onto your personal data for as long as you stay subscribed to our mailing list. If you contact us via email, letter or our contact form your information may be held for the period of up to 7 years in line with our email retention policy.

We may use your personal data in order to:

  • Administer our website and the AshfordFOR campaign,
  • Keep our website secure and prevent fraud,
  • Send you newsletters, when you have given us consent to do so,
  • Reply to any enquiry you have sent us via this website, via email or via letter,
  • Send you non-marketing communications.

Who we share personal data with and why

We may share your personal data with:

  • our employees, officers, suppliers and subcontractors in order to administer and ensure the good performance of this website,
  • our employees, officers, suppliers and subcontractors in order fulfil any query you have made to us.
  • any other official authority, to the extent we are required to do so by the law.

Your Data and your rights

Under the new 2018 GDPR, you have the right to:

  • be informed about how your personal data is being used,
  • access your data and supplementary information,
  • update your data if your information needs to be corrected or updated,
  • delete your data from our records,
  • restrict processing of your personal data,
  • object to the processing of your data.

If you would like to exercise any of your rights, please get in touch with our Data Protection Officer.

Withdrawing consent

If you wish to unsubscribe from our newsletter, you can update your privacy settings at any time by clicking on the “Unsubscribe” button at the bottom of your newsletter.

Our security and your data

Ashford Borough Council has appropriate technical and organisational measures in place to protect your data, and prevent the loss or misuse of your personal information.

In case of a data protection breach of a nature likely to result in a risk to the rights and freedoms of the individual we will contact the supervisory body within 72 hours and if of a high risk to the individual will contact the individual without undue delay.

Links to third-party websites

Ashford Borough Council is not responsible for any third-party websites that may be accessed through this website and has no control over their privacy policy. Ashford Borough Council does not endorse the content contained in these sites, nor the organisations publishing those sites, and hereby disclaims any responsibility for such content.

Cookie usage policy

When we provide services, we want to make them easy, useful and reliable. Where services are delivered on the internet, this sometimes involves placing small amounts of information on your computer, smart phone, tablet etc. These include small files known as cookies. They cannot be used to identify you personally.

These pieces of information are used to improve services for you through, for example:

  • Enabling a service to recognise your device so you don’t have to give the same information several times during one task,
  • Recognising that you may already have given a username and password, so you don’t need to do it for every web page requested,
  • Measuring how many people are using services, so they can be made easier to use and there’s enough capacity to ensure they are fast.

You can manage these small files yourself and learn more about them through the Direct Gov website: browser cookies - what they are and how to manage them

We use Google Analytics on our website to keep a track of what pages our users are visiting most frequently cookies to help us accurately estimate the number of visitors to the website and volumes of usage. This is to ensure that the service is available when you want it and fast.

The Ashford.gov.uk site uses cookies for collecting non-personal user information from the site. The Ashford.gov.uk site does not collect any information about you except that required for system administration of the website.

Cookies are pieces of data created when you visit a site, and contain a unique, anonymous number. They are stored in the cookie directory of your hard drive, and do not expire at the end of your session. Cookies do not contain any personal information about you and cannot be used to identify an individual user. If you choose not to accept the cookie, this will not affect your access to the majority of facilities available on our website.

Although your browser may be set up to allow the creation of cookies, you can specify that you be prompted before a site puts a cookie on your hard disk, so that you can decide whether to allow or disallow the cookie. Alternatively, you can set your computer not to accept any cookie.

This site uses Google Analytics code to gather statistical information. For more information on how Google Analytics processes this information, visit www.google.com/analytics.

During your visit to the site you may notice some cookies that are not related to Ashford.gov.uk. This happens when you visit a page with content embedded from a third party (for example YouTube videos) or use some of the links to social networking sites (e.g. Share This). These websites may place cookies on your computer. You should check these third-party websites’ privacy policies for more information about their cookies if you are concerned about this.

Make a complaint

If you are unhappy with how we have processed your information, please contact the Data Protection officer in the first instance. If you are still not happy with the outcome you have the right to complain to the supervisory body who can be contacted at: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, SK9 5AF; www.ico.org.uk; Tel. 0303 123 1113.

Copyright

All rights in the design, text, graphics and other material on the website is copyright of Ashford Borough Council or other third parties. Should you wish to reproduce any of the information or alter, modify or distribute it, please contact the Media Team: media@ashford.gov.uk.

Reviewing the Policy

We review and update regularly this privacy policy to remain compliant with any General Data Protection Regulation updates.