Who are we?
Bexley Information, Advice and Support Service is commissioned by Bexley Local Authority who have a statutory duty to commission a service that offers confidential and impartial information, advice and support to families of children, young people with special educational needs or disabilities in the Borough of Bexley.
The personal Information collected by us
Personal information is obtained when you contact us via telephone, email, or face to face. The information we collect is name, address and contact details, child/young person’s date of birth, gender, parent/carers/callers name. We will ask your consent to record personal and sensitive information such ethnicity, special educational need and/or disabilities and physical or mental health. We also record education provision and any other information that will help us to provide a service to you. You do not have to provide this information to receive a service.
What are we doing with your information?
We will only use your personal information to provide services or information to you, or to create anonymised data for general reporting and statistical purposes. We will also use your personal information to obtain feedback from you about the service you have received from us, to help us develop and improve our service. We may also, send you information about opportunities to feedback about local authority, health and social care services.
Reasons we can collect and use your personal information
We rely on ‘consent’ as the lawful basis on which we collect and use your data about ethnicity and disability, and also to send you our feedback survey and information about participation opportunities to give your views about local services.
Will we share your information with anyone else?
Unless we have your permission to do so, we will not share your personal information with any other organisations or individuals outside of Bexley Information, Advice and Support Service. The only exception would be where a failure to share your personal information would lead to a risk of significant harm to you or others.
How long your personal data will be kept?
We will retain this information for 1 year or, if agreed by yourself, for as long as we are directly supporting you and your child or young person. If you agree to us deleting information we hold, you need to be aware that it will not be available should you make a Subject Access Request.
We will not keep information for any other purpose, other than that we have agreed with you eg. if you have agreed for us to contact you for feedback on your service experience.
Your rights
Under the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) you have rights which you can exercise free of charge which allow you to:
- Know what we are doing with your information and why we are doing it
- Ask to see what information we hold about you (Subject Access Requests
- Ask us to correct any mistakes in the information we hold about you
- Object to direct marketing
- Make a complaint to the Information Commissioners Office
- Withdraw consent
Depending on our reason for using your information you may also be entitled to:
- Ask us to delete information we hold about you
- Have your information transferred electronically to yourself or to another organisation
- Object to decisions being made that significantly affect you
- Object to how we are using your information
- Stop us using your information in certain ways
We will always seek to comply with your request however we may be required to hold or use
your information to comply with legal duties.
For further information about your rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, see the guidance from the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on individuals’ rights under GDPR.
If you would like to exercise a right, please email [email protected] or telephone 0203 045 5976.
Keeping your personal information secure
We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality. We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.
Contacts
To exercise your rights about services or if you have a complaint about why your information has been collected, how it has been used or how long it is kept for.
You can contact Information, Advice and Support Bexley or write to:
SEND Information, Advice and Support Service,
London Borough of Bexley,
Civic Offices,
2 Watling Street,
Bexleyheath
DA6 7AT
Tel: 020 3045 5976.
GDPR also gives you right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner who may be contacted on 03031 231113.