Glasgow Helps Privacy Statement

Who we are

Glasgow City Council is a local authority established under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994. Its head office is located at City Chambers, George Square, Glasgow G2 1DU, United Kingdom, and you can contact our Data Protection Officer by post at this address, by email at: dataprotection@glasgow.gov.uk and by telephone on 0141 287 1055.

Why do we need your personal information and what do we do with it?

This Statement is for citizens who have given us their personal information or alternatively where we have received their name, address and telephone contact details from:

• Scottish Government's National Assistance Helpline
• Public Health Scotland
• Other Departments within Glasgow City Council and Arms-Length External Organisations
• Health & Social Care Partnerships
• GPs and Community Health Centres
• Third sector agencies
• Other Support Organisations
• Other Local Authorities
• Housing Associations
• Solicitors
• Family members, friends or carers
• Police Scotland
• Scottish Fire & Rescue Service

To allow us to:

Provide support to citizens who are self-isolating, impacted by the COVID pandemic or who are vulnerable and requiring additional support.  We can assist with concerns and make onward referrals to the appropriate agencies, who provide support with the following (not exhaustive):

• Food
• Medicine
• Financial advice and information
• Wellbeing support
• Utility supplies
• Specialised assistance with a cancer diagnosis and/or a long-term condition
• Private rented sector
• Access to numeracy courses through the Multiply project

We may also receive your personal information to allow us to determine whether you are eligible to receive funding from the Scottish Government's Coronavirus (COVID) Self-Isolation Support Grants scheme.

We may use your information to verify your identity where required and will collect personal information through different methods of contact including:

• Telephone
• Email
• Online forms
• Online Webchat
• Text
• Face to face

Where possible, new IT systems and the development of existing IT systems will make use of system generated or anonymised data in test environments. However, there may be circumstances in which test environments, their users and their developers appointed by Glasgow City Council, such as CGI, may be required to utilise your personal data in a test environment. In such circumstances, Glasgow City Council require that development and test activity comply with data protection legislation, taking reasonable steps to protect your personal data.

In order to improve our services, information may also be shared with academic institutes for research purposes. We will only share the minimum amount of information necessary in order to carry out such research and will take steps to anonymise or pseudonymise the data where possible.

Legal basis for using your information

We provide these services to you as part of our statutory function as your local authority. You can find more details of our role on our website. Processing your personal information is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest by the council.

If you do not provide us with the information we have asked for then we may not be able to provide this service to you.

We also need to process more sensitive personal information about you for reasons of substantial public interest as set out in the Data Protection Act 2018. It is necessary for us to process it to carry out key functions as set out in law and also necessary for us to process this information in connection with the provision of health and social care services. In addition, to support you we require to process information relating to the issues you raise to enable us to make onward referrals to the appropriate support agencies.

Who do we share your information with?

We are legally obliged to safeguard public funds so we are required to verify and check your details internally for fraud prevention. We may share this information with other public bodies (and also receive information from these other bodies) for fraud checking purposes.

We are also legally obliged to share certain data with other public bodies, such as HMRC and will do so where the law requires this. We will also generally comply with requests for specific information from other regulatory and law enforcement bodies where this is necessary and appropriate.

Your information is also analysed internally to help us improve our services.  This data sharing is in accordance with our Information Use and Privacy Policy which can be viewed on our  website (PDF) [127KB] .  It also forms part of our requirements in line with our Records Management Plan approved in terms of the Public Records (Scotland) Act 2011 which can be viewed here. 

As part of the Council's ongoing work to support financial inclusion and tackle poverty in the city, we may share your information for the purpose of supporting your concerns with partner agencies who are able to provide the specialised support to meet your needs including (not exhaustive): GCVS, GGC NHS, your GP, Improving the Cancer Journey, Long Term Conditions Macmillan, Pantries, Police Scotland, One Parent Family Scotland, Scottish Fire & Rescue, The Wheatley Group, The Wise Group, the third sector and volunteer services etc.

You will be told about information exchanges with these bodies as part of our ongoing dialogue with you; we only share information relating to you with partner agencies who are (or will be) directly involved in your care and support.

How long do we keep your information for?

We only keep your personal information for the minimum period amount of time necessary. Sometimes this time period is set out in the law, but in most cases it is based on the business need. We maintain a records retention and disposal schedule which sets out how long we hold different types of information for.

You can view this on our website (PDF) [4MB]  or you can request a hard copy from the contact address stated above.

Your rights under data protection law

Access to your information

You have the right to request a copy of the personal information that we hold about you.

Correcting your information

We want to make sure that your personal information is accurate, complete and up to date. Therefore you may ask us to correct any personal information about you that you believe does not meet these standards.

Deletion of your information

You have the right to ask us to delete personal information about you where:

• you think that we no longer need to hold the information for the purposes for which it was originally obtained
• you have a genuine objection to our use of your personal information - see Objecting to how we may use your information below
• our use of your personal information is contrary to law or our other legal obligation

Objecting to how we may use your information 

You have the right at any time to tell us to stop using your personal information for direct marketing purposes.

Restricting how we may use your information

In some cases, you may ask us to restrict how we use your personal information. This right might apply, for example, where we are checking the accuracy of personal information that we hold about you or we are assessing the objection you have made to our use of your information.

This right might also apply if we no longer have a basis for using your personal information but you don't want us to delete the data. Where this right is realistically applied will mean that we may only use the relevant personal information with your consent, for legal claims or where there are other public interest grounds to do so.

Please contact us as stated above if you wish to exercise any of these rights.

Information you have given us about other people

If you have provided anyone else's details on this form, please make sure that you have told them that you have given their information to Glasgow City Council.

If the person you are providing information about wants any more information on how we will use their information they can visit our website or contact us by email.

Complaints

We aim to directly resolve all complaints about how we handle personal information. If your complaint is about how we have handled your personal information, you can contact the Council's Data Protection Officer.  Contact details can be found here.

However, you also have the right to lodge a complaint about data protection matters with the Information Commissioner's Office.  Details of how to contact the ICO can also be found on our general privacy page.

If your complaint is not about a data protection matter you can find details on how to make a complaint on our website.

More Information

For more details on how we process your personal information visit our website.

If you do not have access to the internet you can contact us via telephone to request hard copies of our documents.