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Privacy notice

Welcome to the Local Government Association’s (LGA's) Privacy notice. We take privacy, and the security of personal data, very seriously, and we are committed to ensuring that we safeguard your personal data at all times and in the best way possible.


This privacy notice contains important information about who we are, what personal information we collect about you; how, when and why we collect your information, the legal basis we rely on for collecting the information and how we use the information and when we might share your personal data; how we keep your personal data secure; how long we keep it; your rights in relation to your personal data; and how to contact us, or the relevant supervisory authorities, should you have a complaint. This notice should be read together with our website privacy policy which contains more detailed information about our data processing.

Who are we?

The LGA is the national membership body for local authorities and we work on behalf of our member councils to support, promote and improve local government. More information on who we are and what we do can be found here. When a council joins the LGA, its councillors and officers automatically become members of the LGA. In addition, councillors automatically become members of the relevant LGA Political Group. As a data controller we operate under the company names of the Local Government Association Unlimited and the Improvement and Development Agency for Local Government, (IDeA).

We are registered with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office as a data controller for both companies under the name “Local Government Association”, and our registration number is Z5871320.

Our contact details

Our head office address is 18 Smith Square, Westminster, London, SW1P 3HZ.. If you need to contact someone to talk about your personal data you can contact our Business Management Team [email protected].

What type of information we collect about you

We may collect the following personal information:

  • Identity Data -including name, username or similar identifier, marital status, title, date of birth and gender.
  • Contact Data -including billing address, delivery address, email address and telephone numbers.
  • Financial Data – including bank account and payment card details.
  • Transaction Data -including details about payments to and from you and other details of products and services you have purchased from us.
  • Technical Data including internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access our website.
  • Profile Data including your username and password, purchases or orders made by you, your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses.
  • Usage Data - includes information about how you use our website, products and services. Marketing and Communications Data- including your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.

How, when and why we collect your personal information

  • When your Council joins as a member of the LGA.
  • If you are appointed to one of our governance structures, including boards, committees, commissions, advisory groups, task and finish groups or the Councillors' Forum
  • Through the LGA Members' Scheme of Allowances
  • When you access support and advice for councillors through our political group offices
  • When you access up-to-the-minute news, briefings and daily news headlines on the LGA website through our suite of subscription e-bulletins
  • When you access our wide range of free or discounted events
  • Through our venue management booking for the conference centre in Westminster for events and catering bookings including any special dietary requirements
  • if you join one of our many special interest groups, including the District Councils' Network, County Councils' Network or the Special Interest Group of Municipal Authorities
  • when you use our facilities at 18 Smith Square,
  • when you request and receive our services such as HR advice and or economic intelligence
  • when we hold special interest groups to help councils share learning and experience about what works on issues like adult social care and financing local public services
  • through council updates to LGA about the needs and priorities of councils to enable the LGA to work effectively in Westminster and Whitehall.
  • through our improvement offer, campaigns and sector support offer
  • through our Principle Advisers
  • When you access our website. Please refer to our Website privacy policy
  • When you work with or for us. Please refer to your HR policies for details.
  • When you contract us.

The legal basis we rely on for collecting data

The law on data protection sets out a number of different reasons for which a company may collect and process your personal data. Sometimes there may be more than one legal basis.

Consent

In specific situations, we can collect and process your data with your consent. We may get your information from third parties, where your permission is given or there is a valid legal basis for obtaining it, for example from publicly available websites, Eventsforce, CRM, Oscar, Teams and other platforms, Oscar and modern Government

You also consent to our processing your personal information when you submit a training event booking form or your bank details for payment of an allowance, travel expenses or to pay for an event. The legal basis for this information is also contract and even legal compliance. In addition, at conferences, webinars and training events we run delegates may be asked if they wish to give their consent to their email address being shared with other delegates for the purposes of networking and sharing good practice. When collecting your personal data, we will only collect data necessary in connection with a particular service.

Contractual obligations

In certain circumstances, we need your personal data to comply with our contractual obligations. For example, if you book a place on one of our conferences, we will collect your personal details to process your booking and communicate with you regarding that booking. We deal with information relating to suppliers to the LGA for the purposes of administering contracts for supplies of products, goods and services to the LGA. We do this because we have a contract with those suppliers. The information we deal with may include (for example) contact details, insurance details and financial details.

Legal compliance

If the law requires us to, we may need to collect and process your data. For example, recording details of any accidents in the LGA which we do because we have a legal obligation to do so. The information may include (for example) contact details of the visitors. In addition, we can pass on details of people involved in fraud or other criminal activity affecting the LGA to law enforcement agencies.

Legitimate interest

As a membership organisation, the processing of personal data is necessary in order for us to pursue our legitimate interests.. In specific situations, we require your data to pursue our legitimate interests in a way which might reasonably be expected as part of running our business and which does not materially impact your rights, freedom or interests.

We will also use your address details to send you direct marketing information, telling you about information and services which we think might be of interest to you. Our political groups will use councillors’ email addresses to communicate with them for LGA election campaigning for member authority representatives to serve on any LGA governance structure in accordance with the terms of our Articles of Association.

The LGA will use councillors’ addresses for marketing and to send councillors a copy of our “First magazine” each month.

We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal data for both marketing and analytical purposes. Visitor management and building security, of keeping records of individuals accessing the LGA building, of which we have a legitimate interest to do.

We maintain lists of contacts.

What we do with the information we gather

We require this information to understand your needs and provide you with a better service and, in particular, for the following reasons:

  • To maintain our internal records – e.g. membership, election management, conference administration.
  • To send you promotional information about third parties which we think you may find interesting and relevant to your employment.

On occasions we may disclose your personal information to third parties:

  • If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our Terms and Conditions; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of the LGA, our members, customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
  • We may also need to share some your personal information with other parties, such as external contractors and our professional advisers and potential purchasers of some or all our business or on a re-structuring. Usually, information will be anonymised but this may not always be possible. The recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations. We may also be required to share some personal information as required to comply with the law.
  • We will use your personal data, with your permission, to provide to third parties who you may be interested in hearing from. We will always ensure we have your permission to do this before we share. Where your personal data is used by us to send you direct marketing, you will be given the option to “unsubscribe”.
  • If you are registered on our recruitment website, Jobtrain, we will use your personal data, with your permission, to administer any recruitment process you have applied for. If you are signed up to receive job alerts via email we may also send you adverts that could be of interest. You are able to amend your preferences on our recruitment system http://jobs.local.gov.uk or you can contact our HR team via email – [email protected]
  • We seek to ensure that our information collection and processing is always proportionate. Please contact our Business Management team at [email protected] if you require any further information in relation to what we do with the information we gather.

How we protect your personal data

We take the confidentiality of personal information very seriously and use recognised security and access controls to protect the information from unauthorised access, loss, misuse, alteration or corruption. We have procedures and processes in place to ensure that your personal information is managed appropriately.

However, we will always recommend that you take your own precautions to protect your own personal data whilst using the Internet and our website. If you have any questions regarding the security of your personal data on our systems, please contact us.

Your rights

Under certain circumstances you have rights under data protection law, we need to make you aware of. The rights available to you depend on our reason for processing your information. The main rights are listed below however a full list of rights can be viewed on the ICO website.

Your right to be informed

You have a right to be informed about the collection and use of your personal data. We have an obligation to be transparent and provide you with this information freely in an easily understood format. This notice serves to provide information on collection and use of personal data, and you may contact us if you want to know more about any aspect of how we handle your personal information. More information on this right is available here.

Your right of access

You have a right to have access to the information we hold about you and to verify that we are using your personal data lawfully. If asked we will provide confirmation of what personal data we hold, provide a copy of the data, and inform you of any other rights you may have. This right always applies. There are some exemptions, which means you may not always receive all the information we process. You can find out more about what you are entitled to request by clicking here.

If you would like to make such a request, please contact our Business Management Team [email protected].

Your right of rectification

You have the right to have any information held about you which is inaccurate or incomplete to be rectified. If you believe that we have inaccurate information, for example a misspelt name, then please contact our Business Management team at [email protected]. and we will do our utmost to sort it for you. This right always applies. More about rectification here.

Your right to erasure

You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances. Please look here for more information on this right.

Your right to restrict processing of your personal data

You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your information in certain circumstances. This is not an absolute right and depends on the circumstance and information held.

More information on this right can be found here.

Your right to data portability

This only applies to information you have given us. You have the right to ask that we transfer the information you gave us from one organisation to another or give it to you. The right only applies if we are processing information based on your consent or under, or in talks about entering into a contract and the processing is automated.

Click here for more information.

Your right to stop automated individual decision making, including profiling

Should we wish to carry out any automated decision making or profiling of you, using your personal data, then we will abide by the law and only do this where it is necessary to do so, or we have your consent. Any decisions made automatically about you will be made obvious to you, where they have a direct effect on you. You will always have the ability to contact us and query these activities and request that they stop or have human intervention.

We aim to be transparent and open about this type of data processing so that you can feel assured that your data is safe, kept confidential and always used lawfully and fairly. Details about this right can be found here.

How to complain

We hope our Business Management team at [email protected] can resolve any query or concern you raise about our use of your information.

You can also complain to the ICO at any time if you are unhappy with how we have used your data. The ICO’s address: Information Commissioner’s Office Wycliffe House Water Lane Wilmslow Cheshire SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113 ICO website: https://www.ico.org.uk

The LGA may be entitled to refuse any request in certain circumstances and where this is the case, you will be notified accordingly.

Where the lawful ground relied upon by the LGA to process any of your personal data is your consent, you have the right to withdraw such consent at any time without having to give any reason.

However, if you do so, the LGA may not be able to provide some or all of its support, products or services to you or the provision of the support, product or service may be affected. To protect the confidentiality of your personal data the LGA may ask you to verify your identity before fulfilling any request in relation to your personal data.

Changes to this privacy notice may take place from time to time. Changes will be shown in this location by virtue of the amended notice.