Our privacy notice

The London Borough of Bexley is registered as a ‘data controller’ under the Data Protection Act with the Information Commissioners Office as we collect and process personal information about you. The information we collect is used in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 and other relevant legislation. Our registration number is

We process and hold information in order to provide public services. This notice explains how we use and share your information. Information may be collected on paper or online form, by telephone, email, CCTV or by a member of our staff. Call recording - not all Council Services record or monitor telephone calls. Where we do, this will be made clear to you via an automated message at the start of your call.

What personal information we will collect

The information we collect include:

  • Name
  • National Insurance details and benefits information
  • Details of any qualifications you hold
  • Other information relevant to:
    • Assisting you in achieving your job search goals
    • Your ongoing employment after leaving Bexley Business & Employment
  • Contact information
  • Evidence of your right to work in the United Kingdom and to access public funds
  • Age, disability status, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and nationality
  • Your employment status and, if you are working, occupation and employer details

Why do we collect information about you?

We may need to collect and hold information about you in order to:

  • To comply with our legal and regulatory functions
  • To conduct research, statistical analysis and reporting
  • Improving our services
  • Complaints you dispute handling
  • To contact you and to send information that we think may be of interest to you
  • Deliver public services including all statutory services
  • Enable other organisations to carry out their statutory services
  • Confirm your identity to provide some services
  • Contact you by post, email or telephone
  • Understand your needs to provide the services that you request
  • Understand what we can do for you and inform you of other relevant services and benefits
  • Obtain your opinion about our services
  • Update your customer record
  • Help us to build up a picture of how we are performing at delivering services to you and what services the people of London Borough of Bexley need
  • To contact an employer to confirm the start and continuation of your employment
  • To share information with our funding bodies and partnership organisations that can offer you additional support
  • To enable third parties to contact you to independently assess our services and to ensure the accuracy of the information provided
  • Allow us to undertake statutory functions efficiently and effectively
  • Allow us to submit data as required to national central public bodies i.e. DfE, HMRC and HSE
  • Fulfil its public health function by processing health and other relevant data, including sensitive classes of information on births and deaths
  • Make sure we meet our statutory obligations including those related to diversity and equalities, and otherwise where the conditions in Schedules 2 and 3 to the Data Protection Act 1998 apply
  • Prevent and detect fraud and corruption in the use of public funds

It may not be possible to provide you with a product or service unless we have appropriate information about you, or your permission to use that information.

Things you can do to help us

  • Help us to make sure that we have identified you correctly by letting us know when you change address or name
  • Tell us if any of your information we hold is wrong
  • Permit us to share as much information about you as we need to

How we use your information

We will use the information you provide in a manner that conforms to the Data Protection Act. We will endeavour to keep your information accurate and up to date and not keep it for longer than is necessary. We may process your information for the following purposes:

  • For the service you requested, and to monitor and improve the Council’s performance in responding to your request
  • To allow us to be able to communicate and provide services and benefits appropriate to your needs
  • To ensure that we meet our legal obligations
  • Where necessary for law enforcement functions
  • To prevent and detect fraud or crime
  • To process financial transactions including grants, payments and benefits involving the council, or where we are acting on behalf of other government bodies, e.g. Department for Work and Pensions
  • Where necessary to protect individuals from harm or injury
  • To allow the statistical analysis of data so we can plan the provision of services
  • Where the conditions in Schedules 2 and 3 to the Data Protection Act 1998 apply

We will not pass any personal data on to third parties, other than those who either process information on our behalf, or in connection with a legal function. We will not disclose any information that you provide ‘in confidence’ to us, to anyone else without your permission, except in the few situations where disclosure is required by law, or where we have good reason to believe that failing to share the information would put someone else at risk. You will be told about this.

Full schedule of who we share personal data with

Information sharing

We may need to pass your information to other people and organisations that provide the service. These providers are obliged to keep your details securely and use them only to fulfil your request. If we need to pass your sensitive or confidential information onto a third party, we will only do so once we have obtained your consent, unless we are legally required to do so. We only transfer your information overseas in individual cases and when required.

We may disclose information to other partners of the council where it is necessary, either to comply with a legal obligation, or where permitted under the Data Protection Act, e.g. where the disclosure is necessary for the purposes of the prevention and/or detection of crime. Where we need to disclose sensitive or confidential information to other partners of the council, we will do so only with your prior explicit consent or where we are legally required to. We may disclose information when necessary to prevent risk of harm to an individual. At no time will your information be passed to organisations external to London Borough of Bexley for marketing or sales purposes or for any commercial use without your prior express consent.

Improving customer records

We are working to make our record keeping more efficient and to be able to provide relevant services more quickly across London Borough of Bexley. Your basic customer record typically comprises your name, address, date of birth, gender, contact details (telephone/email), information which can be used to confirm your identity, a brief summary of your contact with the Council, an indicator of the services used, and a unique reference number. This will not contain extensive details of the services you have received. However, this will also act as an index to other council systems and be able to feed information into them so you can tell us once of changes to your address and contact information.

Detect and prevent fraud or crime

London Borough of Bexley is required by law to protect the public funds it administers. We may use any of the information you provide to us for the prevention and detection of fraud. We may also share this information with other bodies that are responsible for auditing or administering public funds including the Department for Work and Pensions, and other local authorities, HM Revenue and Customs and the Police. In addition to undertaking our own data matching to identify errors and potential frauds, we are required by law to take part in national data matching exercises. Data matching involves comparing computer records held by one body against other computer records held by the same or another body to see how far they match. This is usually personal information. Computerised data matching allows potentially fraudulent claims and payments to be identified. Where a match is found it indicates that there is an inconsistency that requires further investigation. No assumption can be made as to whether there is fraud, error or other explanation until an investigation is carried out. In limited situations we may monitor and record electronic transactions (website, email and telephone conversations). This will only be used to prevent or detect a crime or investigate or detect the unauthorised use of the telecommunications system and only as permitted by the Telecommunications (Lawful Business Practice) (Interception of Communications) Regulations 2000.

Insight

London Borough of Bexley has a statutory duty to constantly seek improvements to our services to residents and service users. Information you provide:

Telephone calls

Ordinarily we will inform you if we record or monitor any telephone calls you make to us. This will be used, to increase your security, for our record keeping of the transaction and for our staff training purposes.

Emails

If you email us, we may keep a record of your contact and your email address and the email for our record keeping of the transaction. For security reasons we will not include any confidential information about you in any email we send to you. We would also suggest that you keep the amount of confidential information you send to us via email to a minimum and use our secure online services or by post.

Using our website

Details about how we deal with information from users of this website are included in our terms and conditions section of this site.

How we protect your information

Our aim is not to be intrusive, and we won't ask irrelevant or unnecessary questions. The information you provide will be subject to rigorous measures and procedures to protect it against disclosure to anyone who shouldn't see it.

We have a set of policies and provide training to staff who handle personal information and may treat it as a disciplinary matter if there is misuse of personal information, these policies include but are not limited to:

We will not keep your information longer than it is needed - term of the programme you have been placed on plus 12 months.

Find out more about length of programmes

We will dispose of paper records or delete any electronic personal information in a secure way. See Microsoft 365 Policy and Records Management Policy.

Your rights

We try to ensure that any information we hold about you is correct. There may be situations where you find the information we hold is no longer accurate and you have the right to ask for this to be corrected.

Further information about how to exercise your rights and request access to your information. See information requests.

Further information

Civic Offices, 2 Watling Street, Bexleyheath, Kent, DA6 7AT 
0208 303 7777

We keep our privacy notice under regular review. If you have any questions concerning data protection, or if you have a complaint about how your information is being used, please contact:

Data Protection Officer
London Borough of Bexley, Civic Offices, 2 Watling Street, Bexleyheath, Kent, DA6 7AT 
data.protection@bexley.gov.uk 
0208 303 7777