Mersey Port Health Authority privacy notice
Who is the Data Controller for the information I provide?
The information that you provide will be processed by Liverpool City Council, which is the data controller for the purposes of the Data Protection Act and GDPR.
Why we collect your data
We collect and use personal data is to support us in carrying out our statutory duties and improve service delivery.
We will usually need at least basic information such as your name and email address in order to administer these functions and contact you about them, and will sometimes need more detailed information to provide tailored services or investigate issues further. We also use the data we hold to monitor how we are doing, contacting you with information about Port Health and to help plan future services.
What is the legal basis for collecting and processing this data?
We will process your information for the purposes of meeting our statutory obligations.
We will process your data in order to provide our service to you for the purposes of the enforcement of statutory food safety legislation, public health legislation, and animal health legislation. We will process your information without consent when we are legally allowed to do so.
This will only be where it is in our legitimate interests to do so and where we are confident that such processing is not likely to prejudice your legitimate interests or rights and freedoms
Information we may collect
In order to fulfil its statutory obligations, the Port Health Service collects a range of information about you. This includes:
- your name, address, email address, telephone number, date of birth (only requested for formal proceedings), business name and address, business email address, business telephone number, occupation
- for the purposes of the investigation of infectious diseases, standard questionnaires also ask about food, environmental and lifestyle exposures for certain infections.
The Authority may also collect information about you whenever you interact with us, for example when you:
- enquire about our services
- make a request for any of the services we provide.
- sign up to receive updates from or sign up to attend any events we may organise, including any training that the Authority may offer.
- attend a meeting with us and provide us with information about you.
- participate in any engagement exercises run by the Authority, including the completion of questionnaires
Do I have to provide this information, and what will happen if I don’t?
If you use the council’s Port Health Service then you need to provide the information requested.
Who will your information be shared with?
We may share your information with other council departments and external organisations such as the Food Standards Agency, Public Health England, Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, Police, and other local authorities.
How long will you keep this information for and why?
We will only keep your information for as long as it is required to deliver the services that we provide. The Port Health service has a retention policy for data held. This retention timescale has been set to meet the requirements of external auditing of our services.
Please see What we do with your data for the council's full retention schedule.
How will my information be stored?
We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.
All information you provide to us will be stored in a range of different secure management systems applicable to the type of service we have been engaged to provide, on secure internal IT and email systems and within secure filing cabinets.
All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers or on secure servers operated by third parties.
Do you receive data from third parties?
In order to meet our legal obligations we may receive information about you from internal and external bodies than can include government bodies, local authorities and police and members of the public.
Will this information be used to make automated decisions about me?
No.
Will my data be transferred abroad and why?
To meet certain statutory requirements your data may be shared with other enforcement agencies outside the UK.
What rights do I have when it comes to my data?
You have a number of rights that are set out on the How to access your data page of this section.
Where can I get advice?
View our Help and advice page for more information.