Your Basic Rights
Under Section 7 of the Data Protection Act 1998, you are entitled to have access to personal data (information about you) that is held by this Authority.

Personal information is information about you and which identifies you. It includes opinions about you and any indications of our intentions in respect of action taken which will affect you specifically and can be held by the authority in its computer systems or in its manual filing systems.

What Does This Mean?
If you ask us to, we must provide you with the following information:-

• Whether or not we use personal information about you.

If so

• what that personal information is;
• why we use it; and
• who, if anyone, this information is given to.

We must also let you see this information and tell you how we got that information.

How Do I Exercise This Right?
You must make a written request that must include your full name, address and other contact details and a full description of the information that you want to see.

We will also need to see evidence of your identity, for example, your birth certificate or passport.

We have a form to make it easier for you to ask for this information. Please ask for a copy if one has not already been provided.

WE DO NOT HAVE TO PROVIDE THE INFORMATION THAT YOU HAVE ASKED FOR UNLESS YOU PROVIDE US WITH THE INFORMATION THAT WE HAVE REQUESTED AND YOU HAVE PAID THE FEE.

Is There a Charge?
There is a fee of £10.00 that must be paid before the information will be given to you. This may be waived in certain circumstances.

Is my Right to See This Information Limited in any way to Protect the Rights of Other People?
Yes, sometimes the information that we have about you also includes information about someone else. If this is the case, we do not have to disclose that information to you unless we have the consent of the other person or we consider that it would be reasonable to do so in all the circumstances, even without the consent of the other person.

For example, we do not have to identify where we got information about you from if it was provided by another individual although we must give you as much information as we can without disclosing the identity of the other person.

Before providing this type of information without the consent of the other person we will consider:

• our duty of confidentiality to that person;
• the lengths that we have gone to obtain their consent;
• their ability to give their consent; and
• their express refusal of consent, if made.

For example, we would have to consider these issues if you wanted to ask us about information that we may hold about your children.

There is some information that we hold about people that we do not have to disclose.

Crime and Taxation

This includes information held for:

• the prevention or detection of a crime;
• the apprehension or prosecution of offenders; or
• the assessment or collection of any tax or duty or of any imposition of a similar nature.

Where, if we were to provide this information to you it might prejudice the matter. This extends to where we have supplied this information to another body for one or more of these reasons.

Regulatory Activities
It also includes information about regulatory activities that we carry out, for example, to protect public funds and health and safety matters.

Research, History and Statistics
We do not have to disclose information used in this manner if it does lead to a decision which affects you particularly or will cause you any damage or distress and you cannot be identified from the results of the research.

Legal Professional Privilege
If we are or might be in legal dispute with you we do not have to show your communications which might be covered by legal professional privilege, for example, communications between the Council and its legal advisers, including its in-house lawyers.

Future Requests
You can ask for this information to be provided again but only after a reasonable period. What is reasonable depends upon the nature of the information, the purpose for which it is used and how often it is altered.

When can I Expect to Receive this Information?
We must provide this information to you as soon as we can or at the latest within 40 days of receiving a request with all the necessary information that we require and which is set out in ** above.

How will I get this Information?
We will provide you with either hard copies or a computer disk with the information on unless it is impossible to do so or to do so would involve disproportionate effort. Alternatively, we can agree between us to provide the information in another way, for example, by letting you see the documents at our premises, either from files or on screen or by letting you know the information over the telephone.

We will also make sure that you can understand the information that you are given. This means that where the information contains abbreviations or codes we will provide an explanation of those abbreviations or codes.

Further Information
Please contact the Data Protection Officer by writing to:
South Derbyshire District Council
Civic Offices
Civic Way
Swadlincote
Derbyshire
DE11 0AH

Tel: 01283 595703
Online: general online enquiry form

Data Protection Policy

Data Protection Request Form (Print out and return) 

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