Who we are and how to contact us
We're the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham (H&F) and (unless we've said otherwise) we're the Controller for the personal data we process. Our Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) registration number is Z5124889.
Depending on the services you access, your data may be handled in different ways. This is H&F's general privacy notice. Use the links on the left to see our service privacy notices for how specific services use your data.
You can contact H&F in many ways, our Contact us page gives general council contact information including our switchboard phone number and our address.
Please see Your data rights for:
- how to contact us to exercise your data rights (for example, to access your data by making a subject access request (SAR)) or if you're unhappy with how we use your data or comply with your data rights
- how to contact our Data Protection Officer (DPO).
What we collect and process
We collect and process a range of personal data about you.
Most of the personal data we process is data you've given directly to us. This could be when you contact us about our services, our jobs vacancies or when you provide feedback.
Some of the personal data we process is data about you we've been given by someone else. If we get data about you from others, we'll let you know how we're processing it unless doing this would be prejudicial or a disproportionate effort.
What we do with it
Our privacy notice is layered so you can select the service that processes your data from the list on the left and see what we collect, how we got it, why we need it and what we do with it.
If necessary, we'll use any of the personal data we hold for the following purposes:
- to give you the best service by making sure we contact you when you need us to
- to maintain and upgrade the systems we use to process your data
- to check the quality and improve existing services and help research and plan new services
- to make sure that public (taxpayers') money is spent wisely and efficiently
- to avoid people being paid money they're not entitled to or having to ask people to pay money back when it has been paid to them incorrectly
- to reduce fraud and for efficient law enforcement, regulation and licensing, criminal prosecutions and court proceedings
- to assist the electoral registration officer in compiling and maintaining the electoral register and contacting you about your voting arrangements.
Who we share it with
We share your data within the council where it's necessary to deliver a service or comply with our statutory obligations.
We may also share your data with:
- our suppliers – if we need them to process your data on our behalf we'll only share with them the data they need and our contract with them will say what they must do with it as our data processor.
- our partners – we may work with other organisations like the Police, Health services, other public authorities, voluntary organisations, to provide services to you or others. Sometimes we may need to share your data with our partners to provide these services. We'll only share with them the data they need and we'll set-out what they can use it for in an information sharing agreement.
- other parties – we will only share your data with other parties where we have a legal basis for sharing it with them. We'll let you know if we need to share your data with someone you wouldn't expect unless doing this would be prejudicial or a disproportionate effort.
We, or suppliers on our behalf, process most of your personal data within the United Kingdom and European Economic Area (EEA). Where it's necessary to process your data outside of the UK/EEA we make sure there are appropriate safeguards in place.
How long we keep it
For more information about how long we keep your data, see our service specific privacy notices below.
When we no longer need your data, we'll dispose of it securely or, if it's of historic interest, we'll transfer it to our local archives service.
Keeping your data safe and accurate
We take care to keep the data we hold about you (on paper and electronically) safe, and we only make it available to those with a right to see it. Examples of our security include:
- Training our staff so they're aware how to safely handle information
- Controlling access to our systems and networks so only those that should have access do have access
- Encrypting data that needs protection so it can't be read without a specific key (for example, a password or 'cypher')
- Pseudonymising data (for example, where we replace your name with a code) so someone can work on your data but not know it's about you.
- Regularly testing our IT systems and ways of working, including installing the latest software security updates so we reduce our vulnerabilities.
We ask you to help us keep your data safe by making sure you let us know if your contact details change (for example, if you move home, change your phone number or email address or something else we need to keep in touch with you).
We will do our best to keep information about you accurate and up-to-date, and would like you to do the same.
What are your rights?
For more information on your rights and how to exercise them please see Your data rights – what they are and Your data rights – how to exercise them.
Who to contact if you're unhappy about how we use your data or comply with your data rights
For who to contact if you're unhappy, please see Your data rights – who to contact if you're unhappy.
What if this notice changes?
If we make a big change to what personal data we process, how or why we process it, or who processes it, we'll update this notice. We may also contact you using other communication channels to make you aware of the changes.
Cookies and IP addresses
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Read more information about how we use cookies.