Engagement and Consultation Privacy Notice

Rochdale Borough Council engages with and consults the public and local businesses for a number of reasons.  Engagement and consultation activity helps to inform our decision making and meet some of our specific legal obligations to consult.

We're responsible for collecting and processing feedback from people who live, work, study, visit or have a business in the borough. This could be about or for:

• The services you use and the local area
• A particular topic
• To help inform our strategies or plans
• To review, design and deliver services

We may also ask you for some equalities (protected characteristics) or postcode information as the council is committed to the principle that all our customers have the right to equality and fairness in the way they are treated and in the services that they receive. Any information you do give will be used to see if there are any differences in views for different groups of people, and to check if services are being delivered in a fair and reasonable way.

We collect feedback in a number of different ways including paper, electronic or online forms, surveys, telephone and email or face-to-face sessions. 

The information we collect will be included in presentations, statistics and reports, which will usually be anonymised (where this is possible) and can't be linked back to you. Some of this information may also be shared with the general public and other organisations.

We collect personal information to make sure that we can carry out our work. The type of information we collect depends on the type of consultation or engagement activity we are undertaking. There are limited occasions when we are legally required to verify that you are a real person and would need to ask for specific information to do that. The personal information we collect could include:

• Contact details, for example, name, address, email, telephone
• Age, gender and gender re-assignment
• Race, ethnicity or nationality
• Sexual orientation
• Religion or belief
• Marital or civil partnership status
• Information relating to your health and wellbeing, disabilities or pregnancy
• Information relating to all members of your household, for example, number and ages of any children
• Information relating to your employment and lifestyle, for example, employment status, skills and training, volunteering
• Information where you are responding on behalf of an organisation, for example, organisation name, job role, organisation contact details

We may also ask you about your caring responsibilities or connection with the armed forces.

When we collect personal information it may be about:

• Customers and residents
• Interested parties, for example, patients, carers, offenders
• Business owners and local groups
• Employees and volunteers
• Elected Members and Members of Parliament (MPs)  

We use your personal information to:

• Facilitate your participation in engagement and consultation activities to understand your views about a particular topic
• Respond to your enquiries and comments or inform you of the outcome of the consultation
• Promote the service we provide and keep you informed about other opportunities and events where you have requested this
• Monitor and improve service provision and inform future policy, strategy and planning
• Undertake equalities monitoring
• Undertake research, analysis and produce statistics, for example, the types of individuals and groups participating

We have a legal duty to consult across a number of areas. This is detailed in legislation and guidance including:

• Local Government Act 2000 – this places a duty on authorities to consult.
• Health and Social Care Act 2012
• Equality Act 2010
• Public Sector Equality Duty 2011
• Human Rights Act 1998
• Climate Change Act 2008
• Development Management Procedure Order

We are allowed to process personal and sensitive data for the following reasons under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Articles and the Data Protection Act:

• 6 (1) (a) Consent of the individual
• 6 (1) (c) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation
• 6 (1) (e) Public task or statutory function
• 9 (2) (a) Explicit consent of the individual
• 9 (2) (g) Substantial public interest

We collect information from and disclose information to individuals and organisations that can support our work including:

• Council departments
• Other public bodies and authorities
• Ombudsman and regulatory bodies
• Partner agencies
• Service providers and suppliers, for example, a third party contracted to analyse the responses, or a system or platform supplier who collects the data on our behalf
• Councillors

• Consultations and surveys
• Have your say

Contact the team