Privacy notice - Help Boro COVID-19 Support Hub

Middlesbrough Council runs a hub to provide support to residents during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We collect personal data such as name, address, contact details, and descriptions of the kind of support that you need. We also collect ‘special category’ data such as health information.

We collect information directly from you through phone calls, emails, and online forms. We also receive information from other organisations or third parties such as the Government Digital Service, which sends us the ‘Incoming Local Authority Dataset’. This contains information about people in our area who have been referred to us when they contacted the Government for help. NHS Digital sends us personal data, including NHS Patient Number, in the ‘NHS Shielded Patient List’, which they developed to identify people who are at high risk of complications from COVID-19.

We use your personal data to help us meet our ‘legal obligations’ or where we are undertaking a ‘public task’ in the public interest. We use ‘special category’ data where this is necessary to ‘provide health and social care services’ or where there is a ‘substantial public interest’ based in law for statutory and government purposes.

We use personal data to coordinate a wide range of services provided by us and our partner organisations to people who are shielding, self-isolating, or are otherwise in need of support due to the COVID-19 pandemic including where their financial situation has been disrupted.

Some of the services we provided include access to food, support with shopping and other errands, delivery of medication and prescriptions, social support. We also provide a point of contact for enquiries and existing service requests for other council services such as council tax, benefits or other financial support.

Where we have discussed and identified an external organisation that can help and support you, we will share your data with them. We also share information with Government departments such as the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which coordinates priority online supermarket home deliveries.

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.

For health information provided by NHS Digital in the Shielded Patient List, we will only keep the data that identifies you until 31 March 2021 or unless this is extended by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. All other personal data that we collect will be held in line with the timescales identified in our Records Retention Schedules available on our website.

No, the personal data is processed and stored only in the UK.

We will not use this personal data for any 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