Privacy notice – eConsult

North Somerset Council is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office for the purposes of processing personal data.

eConsult is administrated on behalf of North Somerset Council by our partner Inovem Ltd who can be contacted via their website.

The information you provide will be held and used in accordance with the requirements of UK and European data protection law. Your personal information is processed entirely within the UK.

We list all North Somerset Council consultations on our online consultation register called ‘eConsult’ (www.n-somerset.gov.uk/consult). You do not need to register if you want to browse our consultations or to take part in the vast majority of them.

You do need to register if you want to:

• receive a weekly email alerting you to new consultations run by North Somerset Council. For this, all we need is need an email address. Additionally, you can choose to tell us which topics you are interested in and we’ll only include consultations about those topics in the email we send.
• take part in a ‘must-register’ consultation. These are very rare and you will get more information and be invited to register at the time.

Your email address (and any topic preferences) are personal information. As part of your registration you are required to create a password. This is so that you can access a ‘My Profile’ page on this website where you can change your email preferences, and also offers another way of unsubscribing from receiving the emails.

The information will form part of your eConsult registration. We only collect the minimum personal data required to provide your registration. The information is used for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest, as allowed under the General Data Protection Regulation Article 6(1)(e). We will hold your personal information until you unsubscribe. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ link in:

• the weekly emails you receive
• the ‘My Profile’ area of eConsult

We may lawfully disclose information to public sector agencies to prevent or detect fraud or other crime, or to support the national fraud initiatives and protect public funds under the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. Under the conditions of the Digital Economy Act 2017, we may also share personal data provided to us with other public authorities as defined in the Act, for the purposes of fraud or crime detection or prevention, to recover monies owed to us, to improve public service delivery, or for statistical research. We do not share the information with other organisations for commercial purposes.

Your personal information is not used for any automated decision-making or profiling except where you have asked us to inform you only about consultations on certain topics. In that case, the weekly email will be tailored to match your stated interests.

If you have any queries or concerns about how your personal data is handled, contact our Data Protection Officer at DPO@n-somerset.gov.uk. You may also direct a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

You have the right to see the personal data we process about you, as well as the right of objection, rectification, and restriction to the processing.