Data Protection

Data Protection legislation is designed to protect your personal data and to make sure that it is dealt with carefully and properly. Personal data is a term which covers a wide range of information about you, such as your name, address, telephone number and financial details.

All organisations that collect and deal with personal data are required to comply with six important principles:

  • We must process personal data lawfully, fairly and transparently
  • We must only process personal data for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes, and other uses must be compatible with these purposes
  • Personal data must be adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which it is used
  • Personal information must be kept accurate and where necessary, up to date
  • Personal data must not be kept for longer than is actually necessary
  • Personal data must be processed in a secure manner, including protection against unauthorised or unlawful use of personal data and against its accidental loss, destruction or damage, using appropriate technical and organisational measures

Carmarthenshire County Council is committed to complying with the legislation by applying these principles across all its services.

Please also refer to our Privacy Noticesfor more details about how we use your information in specific Council services.

Your right of access

You have the right to access information that is held about you by making a request to the Council. You can:

  • Have confirmation that personal data about you is being processed
  • Have a copy of the personal data

You can also obtain supplementary information about the processing of your data, such as how long we keep information about you.

Making a request

You can make a request by emailing us at dataprotection@carmarthenshire.gov.uk.

You can also download our subject access request form.

Please note that this right of access does not normally allow you to access information about other people.

We also have to make sure that any personal data we release is given only to those who have the right to receive it. Therefore, if we are uncertain as to your identity we will ask you to verify this by providing more information.

In such circumstances, it may be necessary for us to see a document confirming your identity before we give you any personal data. Examples of documents would include:

  • Birth certificate
  • Passport
  • Driver’s licence
  • Utility bill

We are required to provide a response to a request as soon as possible and at the latest, within one month of receiving the request.  Where requests are complex or numerous, the Council is allowed to extend this by an additional two months.

Closed Circuit Television (CCTV)

You also have the right to access images of yourself recorded on Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) systems controlled by the Council.

Subject to any exemptions that might apply, if we hold it, we can provide a copy of CCTV footage that contains images of you.

Requests for CCTV images are generally dealt with in the same way as other subject access requests, using the contact details provided above.

We need the following information from you to enable us to search for any images we hold:

  • The location of the CCTV system
  • The time and date the you believe the images were recorded
  • A photograph of yourself, that was current at the time the images were recorded

It would also be helpful if you could provide any other information that would assist in identifying the images (e.g. any distinguishing items of clothing worn by you at the time). We may require other information from you to confirm your identity.

Other Data Protection rights

As well as accessing the personal data that the Council is processing about you, you have the right to:

  • Have any inaccurate or incomplete information rectified (corrected)
  • 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

Where consent is the only basis for processing your personal data, you can also withdraw this at any time.

To find out more about these rights and how to exercise them, please use the contact details provided at the bottom of this webpage.

The Information Commissioner’s Office also provides detailed guidance on your rights and a link is provided below.

How long we keep information

We keep information in accordance with our Retention Schedules

Freedom of Information Act 2000

You have a general right to access information which we hold that does not relate to you as an individual, and which we do not routinely publish by making a request under the  Freedom of Information Act. We also follow the ICO Publication Scheme which gives you easy access to information about the Council including expenditure and performance data.

Complaints

If you have you any concerns regarding the processing of your information by the Council, you can address these to our Complaints Team, or raise them with the Information Commissioner’s Office.

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