Privacy Notice: District Councils’ Network
Our privacy notice explains what information we keep about you, how we use it and what we do to keep it safe.
About us
The District Councils’ Network (DCN) are a special interest group of the Local Government Association who represent and serve the interests of our members who are all district councils. While most of the information we hold is already in the public domain, we are committed to data security and take reasonable and appropriate steps to protect your information.
1) Types of information we hold:
For member councils we hold some or all of the following details for leaders and members of district councils, chief executives and relevant officers and councillors:
Title, full name, email address, postal address (council address), relevant council phone numbers
We keep hold of previous interactions you may have with us. This includes emails, survey responses, and consultation responses.
We also run a training programme, the DCN Staff Development programme, and will hold relevant data for applicants and mentors from our member councils. On application for the staff development programme, we will make you aware of the data we will hold, what data will be shared and for the length of time the data is held. We email our mentors on a yearly basis to give them the option to opt out, once opt-ed out we will delete your details from our database.
2) How do we collect this information?
The details for our councillors and officers are largely online and in the public domain. However we also collect information in the following instances:
– When you contact us, including email correspondence, survey responses, staff development programme applications and registering for DCN events
-When member authorities confirm Chief Executive, officer and member details
3) How do we use the information?
DCN is a member led organisation and a subscription service. By renewing your membership with the DCN, you are consenting to allowing us to contact you; we mainly use this information to let you know about the activities of the network including policy updates, future events and meetings. We also share publically available information on the grounds of legitimate interest, for example to invite you to relevant parliamentary events.
4) The legal grounds for processing personal details
As a special interest group of the Local Government Association, we consider that we have a ‘legitimate interest’ to store your details in accordance with GDPR.
The interest in this case is from both the perspective of DCN and our member councils. We store the information listed in section one in order to contact you to update you on our activity, present research, gather your opinions, conduct surveys in relation to issues pertaining to district council activity, organise events and meetings.
Holding your data ensures easy and effective communications, allowing us to keep our members updated on our activities. This is integral for achieving the DCN aims and objectives which aim to benefit our members.
We will continue to send our members relevant communications to help ensure you are able to get the most from your membership with the district council’s network. If you wish to discuss the communications we send to you or the grounds on which we send them, please do not hesitate to contact Pippa Rugman at pippa.rugman@local.gov.uk using the details below.
We use the following external sites for events administration and to collect your views.
– Eventbrite for the administration of our events. Their privacy policy can be found by clicking this link.
– survey monkey for conducting surveys. Their privacy policy can be found by clicking this link.
– google forms for conducting surveys and applications to our staff development programme their privacy policy can be found by clicking this link.
We will always give members an alternative method of communication should they not wish to use the above websites. Please contact DCN@local.gov.uk for more information should this affect you.
We may share relevant and specific public emails with third party sponsors with your consent. By this, we mean sharing delegate lists for events such as our DCN conference with sponsors. We will always make you aware of this on booking forms and will make it possible for you to opt-out of this.
5) How long will we retain your details?
All details we hold are retained on a secured service and are only accessed by the DCN staff team.
The DCN write out every year to confirm the DCN Assembly representative from each council and will store the relevant person’s details until we are informed the representative has changed.
For non-political representatives, we will retain details for as long as your authority remains a member of the DCN and it is relevant and appropriate to do so.
6) Everyone’s rights under the new law
- The right to be informed about the processing of your personal information
- The right to have your personal information corrected if it is inaccurate and to have incomplete personal information completed
- The right to object to processing of your personal information
- The right to restrict processing of your personal information
- The right to have your personal information erased (the “right to be forgotten”)
- The right to request access to your personal information and to obtain information about how we process it
- The right to move, copy or transfer your personal information (“data portability”)
- Rights in relation to decision making which has a legal effect or otherwise significantly affects you
If you would like to discuss your rights further in relation to DCN, please contact Pippa.rugman@local.gov.uk