Privacy Policy

INVEST HOUSLOW WEBSITE’S POLICY

Please note, from the 25th May 2018 the Data Protection Act 1998 will be replaced with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). This privacy notice will be updated prior to this date and you are advised to check back at this page.

The London Borough of Hounslow is a Data Controller and we are responsible for collecting and processing your personal information. Processing includes the organisation, retrieval, consultation, use and deletion or destruction of information and its disclosure to other agencies.

This privacy notice tells you what to expect when the Council collects personal information. This privacy notice covers contact with the Council and its officers directly, through email, telephone and this website.

The information you provide will be processed mainly in connection with the administration of the Council services. A full list of what information we control and process and for what purposes is set out in our notification with the Information Commissioner’s Register of Data Controllers. Our registration number is Z5761176. You can view our registration on the Information Commissioner’s website.

 

WHO WE ARE

Our website address is: www.investhounslow.com

Invest Hounslow website is part of the Hounslow Council

Address: London Borough of Hounslow, Civic Centre, Lampton Road Hounslow TW3 4DN

Email: enquiries@investhounslow.com

Telephone number: 020 8583 5556

 

WHAT PERSONAL DATA WE COLLECT AND WHY WE COLLECT IT

Information we collect

When you contact us by phone, email or through the Invest Houmslow website/ Councils website we may need to
collect personal information about you oso that the appropriate service can be provided. The information we require from you may include personal information, such as:

  • First name
  • Last name
  • Address
  • Telephone number
  • Email address
  • Business name

 

What do we use it for?

We use your personal data within the rules set out in the General Data Protection Act.
We process this data for the following reasons:

  • where you have consented to the processing to ensure we meet our legal requirements.
  • to allow us to communicate and provide services appropriate to your needs.
  • where we are legally obliged to undertake data processing e.g. for licensing.
  • planning enforcement, trading standards, food safety, prevention and/or detection of fraud and crime.
  • to process financial transactions or where the council is acting on behalf of other government bodies e.g. Department for Works and Pensions.
  • where necessary to protect citizens from harm or injury.
  • to conduct research or statistical analysis that allows us to target and plan the provision of services to identify residents/users for the purpose of notifying them of proposed or planned changes to services that may affect them to assist the council in responding to emergencies or major accidents. This allows the council, in conjunction with the emergency services, to identify citizens who may need additional support.
  • Please note phone calls to our customer service team may be recorded for training and quality improvement purposes.

Personal data is also generated from technical processes such as contact forms, comments, cookies, analytics, and third-party embeds.

By default, WordPress does not collect any personal data about visitors, and only collects the data shown on the User Profile screen from registered users. However, we have a ” Contact form” plugins that collect personal data.

Use of IP addresses

We capture the IP address of users who use the contact us form on the invest hounslow website. The Council’s website does not automatically capture or store personal information, other than logging the user’s IP Address or the location of your computer or network on the Internet, for systems administration and troubleshooting purposes. If you are connected to the Internet, you have an IP address.

 

COMMENTS

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

MEDIA

All uploaded files are usually publicly accessible. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

 

CONTACT FORMS

We currently use a contact form plugin, to collect data when someone submits a contact form such as Name, Email and Message. We may keep contact form submissions for a certain period for customer service purposes, but we do not use the information submitted through them for marketing purposes.

 

COOKIES

What Are Cookies?

As is common practice with almost all professional websites this site uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your experience. This page describes what information they gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or ‘break’ certain elements of the functionality of the site.

How We Use Cookies

We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately, in most cases, there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use.

Disabling Cookies

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will usually result in also disabling certain functionality and features of the this site. Therefore it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.

The Cookies We Set

When you submit data to through a form such as those found on contact pages cookies may be set to remember your user details for future correspondence.

Third Party Cookies

In some special cases, we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details which third party cookies you might encounter through this site.

This site uses Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solutions on the web for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content.

For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.

Third party analytics are used to track and measure usage of this site so that we can continue to produce engaging content. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site or pages you visit which helps us to understand how we can improve the site for you.

EMBEDDED CONTENT FROM OTHER WEBSITES

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

ANALYTICS

We currently use Google Analytics to anaylse and track information and only captures the demographics, Country, language and operating system. Please click here to read privacy policy of our analytics provider.

 

WHO WE SHARE YOUR DATA WITH

Who your information may be shared with (internally and externally)
If we are required to, we will only share your information with internal departments and other service providers, contractors and/or partner bodies, but only where it is necessary:

  • to comply with a legal obligation.
  • where permitted under the GDPR Act.
  • where the disclosure is necessary for the purposes of the prevention and/ordetection of crime.
  • where it is necessary to allow a third party working for or on behalf of the Council.

We will strive to ensure that any personal data in our care will be kept safe and that where your information is disclosed to a third party, we will seek to ensure that the third party has sufficient systems and procedures in place to prevent the loss or damage of personal data.
We will not use your personal data for third-party marketing purposes without your prior express consent.

HOW LONG WE RETAIN YOUR DATA

We will keep your information on our records as long you remain a customer and will retain the information unless you unsubscribe or request us to delete your data.
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

WHAT RIGHTS YOU HAVE OVER YOUR DATA

If you have an account on this site or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

The Council tries to be as open as it can be in terms of giving people access to their personal information. Individuals can find out if we hold any personal information by making a Subject Access Request under the General Data Protection Act.
You can make a request to the Council for any personal information we may hold about you by:
Completing the online form or Emailing the Customer Relations team – dataprotection@hounslow.gov.uk
Or
Writing to us :
Customer Relations
London Borough of Hounslow
Civic Centre
Lampton Road
TW3 4DN
The information will be provided to you free of charge.

HOW WE COLLECT YOUR DATA

WE COLLECT DATA THROUGH VARIOUS SOURCES SUCH AS :

  • Contact form on the Invest Hounslow website.
  • When you subscribe to our e-newsletter on Invest Hounslow and Hounslow Council Website.
  • When you send us an email via enquiries@investhounslow.com
  • When you contact us by telephone or by twitter.
  • Meeting you at Business Events or Networking events.

HOW WE STORE YOUR DATA

When you contact us through the contact us form on invest hounslow website, the information is stored on our website database and an email is sent through google apps which then get forwarded onto our Council’s internal mailboxes.
We use Gov Delivery platform to store our contacts who have subscribed onto our e-newsletter. (previously used mailchimp)

INFORMATION SECURITY

We recognise that the information you provide may be sensitive and we will respect your confidentiality. We keep information about you confidential. This means we store it securely and control who has access to it. We will not store any information where we are not legally required to do so.

Find out more about Information Security.

YOUR RIGHT TO MAKE A COMPLAINT

The Council tries to meet the highest standards when collecting and using personal information. For this reason, we take any complaints we receive about this very seriously. We encourage people to bring it to our attention if they think that our collection or use of information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate.
This privacy notice was drafted with brevity and clarity in mind. It does not provide exhaustive detail of all aspects of the Council’s collection and use of personal information. However, we are happy to provide any additional information or explanation needed. Any requests for this should be sent to:

Customer Services

London Borough of Hounslow
Civic Centre
Lampton Road
TW3 4DN
If you want to make a complaint you can contact us on:

Complaints Team

London Borough of Hounslow
Civic Centre
Lampton Road
TW3 4DN
Find out more on how to make a complaint.

Data Protection Officer

The Council’s Data Protection Officer can be contacted on:
Email the information governance team on InformationGovernance@hounslow.gov.uk
Information Governance Team
London Borough of Hounslow
Civic Centre
Lampton Road
Hounslow
TW3 4DN

INFORMATION COMMISSIONER’S OFFICE

The Information Commissioner is the UK’s independent body set up to uphold information rights.
If you would like to know more about your rights under the Data Protection law, and what you should expect from us, visit the Information Commissioner’s website.

If you have any concerns regarding our privacy practices or about exercising your Data Protection rights, you may contact the Information Commissioner’s Office:

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Telephone: 0303 123 1113 or 01625 545 745
Email: casework@ico.org.uk

HOW WE PROTECT YOUR DATA

We protect your data through technical measures such as encryption; security measures such as two-factor authentication; and measures such as staff training in data protection.

EVENTS CALENDAR

Find out more about events in Hounslow on our detailed calendar