Electoral Services (Electoral Registration)

1. The purpose for which we use your personal data

The information we collect about you will be used for the purposes of:

• To process your application to register to vote, and (where you provide contact details) to communicate with you about your registration
• Checking that you are entitled to register to vote
• (at your request) process an application for an absent vote
• (at your request) process an anonymous application
• (at your request) provide you with a Voter Authority Certificate (VAC) to use as photo ID in order to vote at polling stations (Parliamentary and Police and Crime Commissioner Elections only)
• Maintaining the Electoral Register, including postal and proxy voters
• Providing a list of eligible voters for canvassing purposes to candidates and political parties standing at elections

The legal basis for the processing of your information is to comply with our legal obligations under the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013.

If you do not give us the information we need when we ask for it, we will be unable to register you as a voter. As providing the information is a legal requirement, this may also result in a fine of up to £1,000.00.

2. What type of information do we use?

We collect the following types of personal data about you to be included on the Electoral Register:

• Name
• Address

We also collect the following information for administration purposes:

• Nationality
• National Insurance Number
• Date of birth
• Telephone number
• Email address
• Your family composition

3. Do we use information received from other sources?

To provide this service, we collect information directly from you but also receive information from the following sources:

• Registered Social Landlords
• Electoral Commission
• Residential/nursing homes
• University of Wales Trinity St David
• Digital Cabinet Office

We also obtain information from the following Council services:

• Council Tax
• Housing Benefits
• Housing
• Education
• Blue Badges
• Leisure
• Adult social care
• Carmarthenshire County Council payroll system

The following types of personal data are obtained:

• Name
• Address
• Telephone number
• Email address
• Date of birth
• Your family composition

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?

The Full Electoral Register can be viewed by any organisation or member of the public and an edited Open Register, which you can opt out of, can be purchased by any person.

We also provide information held on the Full Register to the following:

• Registered Credit Reference Companies
• Registered Political Parties who are entitled to information for the area
• Candidates standing for Election and Registered Political Parties, who are entitled to information for the area they are contesting
• Council services that need to check names and addresses for business purposes
• Current Councillors, who are entitled to the Register for the area they are representing
• Town & Community Councils
• The Court Service
• National Library of Wales
• British Library
• Electoral Commission
• Our software supplier (Idox)
• UK Statistics Authority
• Boundary Commission for Wales
• Police & Crime Commissioner
• Pembrokeshire County Council, where you are a voter in the Carmarthen West Constituency which is managed by the Pembrokeshire Returning Officer
• Printing companies which provide us with electoral stationery including postal voting papers.

To verify your identity, the data you provide will be also processed by the Individual Electoral Registration Digital Service managed by the Cabinet Office. As part of this process your data will be shared with the Department of Work and Pensions and the Cabinet Office suppliers that are data processors for the Individual Registration Digital Service. You can find more information about this here.

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

Old copies of the Register will be kept for 15 years to allow for the checking of overseas voter applications, however public access is only allowed for the current Register.

The National Library for Wales holds copies of the Full Register and may supply copies which are more than 10 years old for research purposes under certain circumstances.

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 .