Privacy Notices - The Register Office Privacy Notice

This information is applicable to anyone wishing to register a birth, death, stillbirth, marriage or civil partnership. It is also applicable to anyone who makes an application for any service provided by Swindon Registration Services.

A Privacy Notice is a statement issued by an organisation which explains how personal and confidential data about individuals is collected, used and shared.

The Superintendent Registrar is a data controller for birth, marriage and death registrations and can be contacted by email: superintendentregistrar@swindon.gov.uk , or in writing at Swindon Register Office, The Civic Offices, Euclid Street SN1 2JH.

The local authority is a data controller for civil partnership registrations and can be contacted at DataProtection@swindon.gov.uk or by calling 01793 445500 and asking to speak to the Data Protection Officer.

The Registrar General for England and Wales is a joint data controller for birth, marriage, death and civil partnership registrations and can be contacted at the General Register Office, Trafalgar Road, Southport, PR8 2HH.

Personal data relates to a living individual who can be identified from that data. Identification can be by the information alone or in conjunction with any other information in the data controller’s possession or likely to come into such possession.

Swindon Registration Service collects a range of data about you on behalf the Registrar General and the UK Statistical Authority. This includes names, dates of  birth, nationality, gender, marital status, immigration status, occupations and addresses.

Contact details including name, address, telephone number and email address, may also be collected from you if you are making an application to this office, for example, for a certificate or to correct information contained in a register entry.
 

The information you provide will be used to register a birth, death, stillbirth, marriage or civil partnership, or process your request to provide a service such as a non-statutory ceremony or certificate.

Personal information collected from you in order to register an event is required by law. The main legislation which governs the collection of registration information is the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, the Marriage Act 1949 and the Civil Partnership Act 2004. You may be legally obliged by these acts, and other pieces of legislation, to provide certain pieces of information.

Personal information collected from you in order to register an event is required by law and may also be necessary to provide both statutory and non-statutory services.

A copy of the information collected by a registration officer will also be sent to the Registrar General for England and Wales so that a central record of all registrations can be maintained.

Registration information held at this office may be shared with other organisations in the course of carrying out our functions, or to enable others to perform theirs.

We will only share information where there is a lawful basis to do so for the following reasons:

• For statistical or research purposes
• For administrative purposes by official bodies, for example, ensuring their records are up-to-date in order to provide services to the public
• For fraud prevention or detection, immigration and passport purposes

Further information on data held by the registration service and a full list of the organisations with whom registration data is shared, can be found in the 'List of processing activities for registrars, superintendent registrars and registration authorities document.

We will do what we can to make sure we hold records about you (on paper and electronically) in a secure way, and we will only make them available to those who have a right to see them.

Examples of our security include:

• encryption, meaning that information is hidden so that it cannot be read without special knowledge (such as a password). This is done with a secret code, or what is called a 'cypher'. The hidden information is said to then be 'encrypted'.
• pseudonymisation, meaning that we will use a different name so we can hide parts of your personal information from view. This means that someone outside of the Council could work on your information for us without ever knowing it was yours.
• controlling access to systems and networks allows us to stop people who are not allowed to view your personal information from getting access to it
• training for our staff allows us to make them aware of how to handle information and how and when to report when something goes wrong
• regular testing of our technology and ways of working including keeping up to date on the latest security updates (commonly called patches)

We keep your information for as long as necessary for the purpose that it was collected. Please contact IG team if you want to know the retention schedule.

A copy of any register entry will be provided by this office in accordance with the law to any applicant, provided they supply enough information to identify the entry concerned and pay the appropriate fee. The copy may only be issued in the form of a paper certified copy (a ‘certificate’). An application for a certificate may also be made to the General Register Office.

You have the right to request access to the personal information we hold about you, to be informed about the collection and use of your personal information, for incorrect information to be corrected (where the law permits) and to request us to restrict the processing of your personal information. In certain circumstances you have the right to object to the processing of your personal information. Your information will to be subjected to automated decision-making.

Indexes for events registered at this office are publicly available in order to help members of the public identify the registration record they might need. Indexes are available in paper format and electronically.

In the event that you wish to complain about the way that your personal data has been handled by Swindon Borough Council, you should write to the Data Protection Officer and clearly outline your case. Your complaint will then be investigated in accordance with our customer complaint procedure.

If you remain dissatisfied with the way your personal data has been handled, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at www.ICO.org.uk. You may refer the matter to the Information Commissioner’s Office whose contact details are below:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Email: casework@ico.org.uk

This website also contains information on data protection and your rights and remedies.

If you fail to provide information you are required to give us you may, amongst other things, be liable to a fine, or we may not be able to provide the service you are applying for, such as marriage or a civil partnership.

An audit will take place and personal data will be deleted every twelve months  to ensure that we remain legally compliant in accordance with current data protection legislation.

You are viewing the Privacy Notice for The Register Office.

Read the main Privacy Notice