Privacy notice - Bereavement Services

Middlesbrough Council Bereavement services have a statutory duty to provide advice on all aspects of burial, cremation and memorials.

To provide Bereavement Services to you we may need to process your personal information which could include name, address, next of kin, doctor, payment details

We collect personal information primarily from relatives of deceased individuals.

We process your personal data on a number of lawful basis including where you have given your consent, to meet our legal obligations, or to allow us to deliver a ‘public task’ based on our legal powers. The laws that require or allow us to process personal data for Bereavement services include:

• Burial Act 1857
• Crematorium Act 1952
• Local Authorities Cemeteries Order 1977
• Registration of Burials Act 1864

We use your personal data to provide the following services:

• Cremation, burial and memorial applications;
• Exhumation records;
• Transfer of exclusive rights of burial;
• Online condolence messages;
• Records of Payments; and
• General correspondence between yourselves and the council on matter relating to the bereavement service

We share information where we have a business need or the law requires us to do so with third parties including Ministry of Justice, funeral directors, coroner, Secretary of State, police, and medical referees.

We use the following measures to ensure that your personal data is secure: data protection and security policies, information security incident reporting, data and device encryption, system and data access controls, user accounts and passwords, physical and environmental security, staff vetting practices, staff training and awareness, data back-ups, ICT network penetration testing, and business continuity and disaster recovery plans.

We only keep your data for as long as the Law requires it and this is set out in our ‘records management retention schedules’. We may keep reports and other documents for longer but will always ensure that your identity is anonymised.

We do not send your personal information outside of the European Economic Area to be processed.

We will never use your information for direct marketing purposes.

Your Information Rights are set out in law and, subject to some exceptions, you have the:

• Right to rectification - to ask for information to be corrected
• Right to erasure - to have your personal data deleted
• Right to object - to how your data is used
• Right to restriction - to request limits on how your data is used
• Right to portability - to request that we move your data to another organisation
• Right of subject access - to request a copy of data the Council holds about you

If you have a concerns about the way we are collecting or using your personal data, you should raise your concern with us in the first instance or directly to the Information Commissioner's Office. Visit the website of the Information Commissioner's Office.

If you would like to discuss anything in this privacy notice or your information rights, please contact:

The Data Protection Officer
Middlesbrough Council
PO Box 500, Middlesbrough, TS1 9FT
Phone: 01642 245432
Email: dataprotection@middlesbrough.gov.uk