School Catering Service

The proper handling of personal information by Carmarthenshire County Council is very important to the delivery of our services and maintaining public confidence.

Personal data is any information that relates to a person who can be directly or indirectly identified from the information. The terms ‘information’ and ‘personal data’ are used throughout this privacy notice and have the same meaning.

To ensure that the Council treats personal information correctly, we seek to adhere in full to the requirements of Data Protection legislation.

This privacy notice has therefore been produced to explain as clearly as possible what we do with your personal data.

1. The purpose for which we use your personal data

The information we collect about you will be used for the purpose of administering school meal payments and providing free school meals.

The legal basis for the processing of your information is to exercise the authority provided to us under the School Standards and Organisation (Wales) Act 2013.

If you do not give us the information we need when we ask for it, we will be unable   to provide your child with a school meal.

2. What type of information do we use?

We collect the following types of personal data to provide a cashless school meals system in secondary schools:

  • Your name and your child’s name
  • Your child’s school year
  • Biometric data
  • Your child’s allergies and food intolerances

We also collect a summary of meals taken and payments received in primary schools.

3. Do we use information received from other sources?

We access the following information from the schools’ management information system to provide both primary and secondary school meals:

  • Your name and your child’s name
  • Address
  • Email address

Our online payment provider (ParentPay) and our meal pre-ordering service provider (Cypad) also give us this information when you use these services.

4. Transferring your information abroad

We use Microsoft Office 365 to process our electronic documents under the terms of a strict agreement, which safeguards your information. This personal data is hosted on servers outside the UK, but only in EU countries which are subject to the General Data Protection Regulation.

We don’t transfer any other information about you outside of the UK.

5. Who has access to your information?

We may need to share your information with the Council’s Debt Recovery section if you do not pay for school meals and incur arrears.

The companies which provide our payment systems in schools also have access to the personal data about your child that is recorded by these systems.

There are also other specific situations where we may be required to disclose information about you, such as:

  • Where the Council is required to provide the information by law
  • Where disclosing the information is required to prevent or detect a crime
  • Where disclosure is in the vital interests of the person concerned

6. How long we will keep your information

We will keep your information for 3 years in accordance with the Council’s Retention Guidelines.

7. Your Data Protection rights

You have the right to:

  • Obtain access to the personal data that Carmarthenshire Council is processing about you
  • Have any inaccurate or incomplete information rectified (corrected)
  • Withdraw your consent to processing, where this is the only basis for the processing
  • Make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the independent body in the UK which protects information rights

In some circumstances, you may have the right to:

  • Object to the processing of your personal information
  • The erasure of your personal data
  • Restrict the processing of your personal information
  • Data portability

8. Contact details

For more information regarding this privacy notice and your rights, please contact:

Data Protection Officer
Carmarthenshire County Council
County Hall
Carmarthen
SA31 1JP

Email: dataprotection@carmarthenshire.gov.uk

Contact details for the Information Commissioner’s Office along with further guidance on Data Protection legislation can be found on the ICO website .

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