North Somerset Council is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office for the purposes of processing personal data. For full details of how we use personal data, please see the Privacy section on our website.
Health exercise nutrition (H.E.N) is a healthy lifestyle programme which is part of routine antenatal care. H.E.N offers weekly support to help mothers-to-be have a healthy pregnancy and to give the baby the best start in life. Further information on the programme can be found in our online directory of services.
We process your personal data:
- following your referral to the service where you will be asked to complete a registration form from which we will capture the personal data we need to provide you with the service
- when you get to the end of your course where you will be given a questionnaire which helps you to assess the changes that you have made as a result of attending the course
- when you provide feedback on the service that you have received and make suggestions on how you think we can improve the course in the future
Why we process your personal data
It is important for us to understand your individual circumstances and any underlying health conditions that might affect the advice we provide throughout the programme to give both you and your baby the best possible outcome. It is also important for us to be able to signpost other services that we offer, such as Smokefree, that are directly linked to the health of you and your baby.
Understanding what you feel are the strengths and weaknesses of the course will help us to improve the health of pregnant women and their babies in the future.
Are we allowed to process your personal data?
We are permitted to process the personal information we gather during the registration process under the provisions of:
- Article 6(1)(e) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation, i.e. that the processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller.
- Article 9(2)(h) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation, i.e. that the processing is necessary for the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health or social care systems and services.
Section 3 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 sets out the duty of local authorities to take steps to improve the health of their local population, and to reduce health inequalities. This includes providing support services to pregnant women to ensure they have access to antenatal care, advice, and information to support a healthy pregnancy and a positive birth experience
Our monitoring of ethnicity information is allowed under Article 9(2)(g) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation, i.e. that the processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest, on the basis of UK law. The UK Data Protection Act establishes Equality of Opportunity or Treatment as a basis for processing special category data such as ethnicity. You are not obliged to provide this information during the registration process; you can instead select the Prefer not to say option.
Personal data we collect
During the registration process we will capture the following personal information:
- full name
- date of birth
- contact details, including postal address, telephone and email address
- contact preferences
- gender (optional)
- occupation
- pregnancy due date
- height and weight
- emergency contact information
- details of medical conditions that might affect your pregnancy
- whether or not you smoke and, if so, whether you would like support to help stop smoking
- ethnicity (optional)
- details of additional support needs, e.g. through a disability
The post course questionnaire encourages you to consider how your food intake and the exercise that you practice have changed since the start of the course.
As part of the feedback process, we will ask you for your views about the course including:
- if the course failed to meet your expectations, your reasons for why this was the case
- the things that you particularly enjoyed or did not enjoy about the course and how you think it can be improved
- changes that you have made to your lifestyle as a result of attending the course
- whether you would recommend the course to others
- whether your comments about the course can be used (anonymously) as part of a case study to promote the programme throughout North Somerset
Sharing personal information with other organisations
The H.E.N in pregnancy programme is delivered by a registered midwife and public health lifestyle advisors. We will therefore share the information you provide with National Health Service under the provisions of an information sharing agreement within the Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG) health community, known as the Integrated Care System, to which North Somerset Council is a signatory.
We otherwise only will share your personal information with other agencies if we are required to do so by law.
None of the information covered by this privacy notice will be processed outside of the UK or EU.
How long we keep your personal information
Your personal details will be retained for a period of 12 months following your final involvement with the programme. At this point your information will be anonymised so that it no longer identifies you but allows us to retain the ability to conduct statistical analysis of the take-up of the service and its outcomes.
Am I subject to any automated decision-making processes as a result of processing my personal information?
We do not make any automated decisions using the personal information covered in this privacy notice. All decisions arising from the information you provide will be subject to human involvement.
Your rights
The UK General Data Protection Regulation and Data Protection Act give you certain rights over your personal information that we process. However not all of those rights are relevant to the information we process for the purposes of the H.E.N in pregnancy service. We do not for example require nor ask for your consent to process your personal information as there are other lawful bases we can use which we have highlighted above in the section headed 'Are we allowed to process your personal data?'.
- you have the right to receive ‘concise and transparent information’ about how we handle your personal data. We achieve this through the use of this privacy notice as well as other privacy information published on our website
- you have the right of access to the personal information we hold about you, the reasons it is being processed, whether it is shared with other organisations, how long we hold it for, and whether there has been a security breach involving your personal data. To exercise this right you can make a subject access request. You do not have to make a subject access request in writing or via the website; you can make such a request verbally if you wish
- you have the right to request that we correct any data we hold about you that is inaccurate
- you have the right to request us to restrict the extent of our data processing, specifically you can request that we do not delete your personal information should you wish it to be retained. Typically this situation arises when information is approaching the limit of its retention period and you wish for it not to be erased
- you have a right to make a complaint if you are unhappy about the way we process your personal information
How to make a complaint about the way we process your personal information
If you wish to make a complaint about how we handle your personal data, we ask that you give our Data Protection Officer the opportunity to respond in the first instance, but you are not obliged to do this.