Driver and Vehicle Standards' privacy policy

​​Introduction

Driver and Vehicle Standards (DVS) is part of the Department for Infrastructure and Environment (IE) who are registered as a ‘data controller’ under the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018.

We process and hold your information in order to provide public services and meet our statutory obligations. This notice explains how we use and share your information. Information may be collected:

• on a paper or online form
• by telephone
  
• by email
• by a member of our staff
• in some cases, by another Government department or 1 of the parishes

We will continually review and update this privacy notice to reflect changes in our services and feedback from service users, as well as to comply with changes in the law.

What information we collect about you

We collect a variety of information about you, including but not limited to:

• name
• address
• telephone number
  
• email address
• gender
  
• date of birth
• health information
• financial information
• driving test and licence information
  
• vehicle registration details
  
• details of motoring offences
  
• CCTV footage
  

We need to collect and hold information about you, in order to:

• maintain our vehicle register.
  
• carry out our duties as licencing authority for driver licencing
  
• regulate operators of commercial goods vehicles over 3,500 kilograms in accordance with the Commercial Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) (Jersey) Law 2022
  
• regulate and licence public service vehicles and drivers
  
• maintain a register of approved driving instructors
• conduct driver testing and theory examinations for licence issue
• carrying out inspections or examinations of vehicles
  
• investigate reports of defective vehicles

How we will use the information we hold about you

We will use the information you provide in a manner that conforms to the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018 and endeavour to keep your information accurate and up to date. We will process your information for the following purposes:

• to carry out the services you have requested
  
• answer your query and investigate complaints relating to our service provision and standards
  
• to ensure that we meet our legal obligations
• to assist other Government Departments and organisations, in meeting their legal obligations. In particular for the prevention, investigation and detection of crime, including parking infringements
  
• to process financial transactions, where charges apply
  
• to allow the statistical analysis of data so we can plan the provision of services

We will not pass any personal data on to anyone outside of the Government of Jersey, other than to those who either process information on our behalf, or where we are required to assist other organisations in fulfilling their legal obligations or because of another legal requirement. We will only do this, where possible, after we have ensured that sufficient steps have been taken by the recipient to protect your personal data and where necessary we will ensure that the recipient has signed a data sharing agreement. A data sharing agreement sets out the purpose of the sharing and the rules that must be followed when processing your data. 

We will not disclose any information that you provide ‘in confidence’, to anyone else without your permission, except in the few situations where disclosure is required by law, or where we have good reason to believe that failing to share the information would put someone else at risk. You will be told about this.

Information processed outside of the European Economic Area ('EEA')

Our Vehicle Registration and Licensing systems are web based and hosted on Island. Personal data held within the systems is anonymised prior to transfer to the contractor for support servicing and testing who are based in the Ukraine, and all data is processed in accordance with standard contractual clauses issued by the European Commission.

Data processing

We may need to pass your information to other Government of Jersey (GOJ) departments or organisations to fulfil your request for a service. These departments and organisations are obliged to keep your details securely, and only use your information for the purposes of processing your service request. We use a system that is shared with the Island’s Parishes for the purposes of recording driving licensing and information about driving convictions. Whilst this system is also used to record practical and theory driving test data the parishes are unable to access this part of your information. Our Vehicle Registration System can be accessed by other Government of Jersey Departments and other States owned entities. These are listed below.

Data sharing

We may need to pass your information to other Government of Jersey departments or organisations in order to assist them in meetings their legal obligations. These departments and organisations are obliged to keep your details securely, and only use your information for specific purposes. Copies of our data sharing and processing agreements with these department are available for you to view upon request. A list of which Government departments we need to share your information with is set out in the table below:

Other forms of sharing

We use a system that is shared with the Island’s Parishes for the purposes of recording driving licensing and information about driving convictions. This requirement is set out in the Road Traffic (Jersey) Law 1956, specifically Articles 4 to 18 inclusive. Whilst this system is also used to record practical and theory driving test data the parishes are unable to access this part of your information.

We are also required by law to provide the names and addresses of vehicle owners to persons or organisations who can demonstrate a reasonable cause for us to do so.

Examples of reasonable cause could be, but are not limited to: 

• where your vehicle is parked on private land and the landowner or their agent wishes to contact you to ask you to remove it
• where you have failed to pay a parking charge
• committed an alleged motoring offence outside of the Island this includes non-compliance in emission-controlled zones. For example, ULEZ in London
• where a vehicle manufacturer needs to contact you in relation to an important safety recall on your vehicle

If we need to disclose any sensitive or confidential information about you, we will only do so if absolutely necessary or once we have obtained your consent where appropriate or unless we are legally required to do so.

Examples of this include, but are not limited to:

• where the disclosure is necessary for the purposes of the prevention and/or detection of crime
  
• for the purposes of meeting statutory obligations

At no time will your information be passed to organisations for marketing or sales purposes or for any commercial use without your prior express consent.

Data security

We have put appropriate security measures in place to prevent your personal data from being used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a legal or legitimate business need to know.

All of our staff have received training on data protection awareness and security. We have procedures in place to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and the Office of the Information Commissioner of any breach where we are legally required to do so.

Publication of your information

We may need to publish your information on our website where we are required to provide statistical information or where you have responded to a public consultation. Although your data will be anonymised to protect your identity.

How long we keep information about you

We will endeavour not to keep your information for longer than is necessary. In some instances the law sets the length of time information has to be kept. For furthe details see the Infrastructure and Environment retention schedule. These set out what information we hold, how long we plan to keep it for and what we plan to do with it at the end of its lifecycle.

In some instances we will not be able to remove your data automatically from our files because of the limitations of some of our legacy processes and systems. There are also some instances where we are still working towards meeting the requirements set out in our retention schedule.

If you are concerned about us continuing to hold your personal information you can contact us to ask that we remove the data immediately. We will always seek to comply with your request but we may require further information from you to be able to locate your data or we may still be required to continue to hold or process your information in order to comply with a legal requirement.

Telephone calls

We may record telephone calls and voice messages that you make to us using recording equipment for monitoring, training and service delivery purposes. File notes of when and why you called may be taken to support service delivery. We will not pass on the content of your telephone calls, unless is it necessary for us to do so either to:

• fulfil your request for a service
• comply with a legal obligation
• where permitted under other legislation

The recordings may on occasion be shared with legal bodies such as States of Jersey Police or legal advisors in support of legal proceedings. We will retain telephone recordings for 30 days.

Emails

If you email us we may keep a record of your email address and a copy of the email for record keeping purposes. For security reasons we will not include any confidential information about you in any email we send to you. We would also suggest that you keep the amount of confidential information you send to us via email to a minimum or use our secure online services where possible or correspond with us by post. We will not share your email address or your email contents unless is it necessary for us to do so either:

• to fulfil your request for a service
• to comply with a legal obligation
  
• where permitted under other legislation

Your rights

You can ask us to stop processing your information

You have the right to request that the Department of the Environment stop processing your personal data in relation to any of our services. However, this may cause delays or prevent us delivering a service to you. Where possible we will seek to comply with your request but we may be required to hold or process information to comply with a legal requirement.

You can withdraw your consent to the processing of your information

In instances where the processing of your information can only be carried out with your consent, you have the right to withdraw your consent to the further processing of your personal data. However, this may cause delays or prevent us delivering a service to you. We will always seek to comply with your request but we may be required to hold or process your information in order to comply with a legal requirement.

You request that the processing of your personal data is restricted

You have the right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal information.  You can exercise this right in instances where you believe the information being processed in inaccurate, out of date, or there are no legitimate grounds for the processing. We will always seek to comply with your request but we may be required to continue to process your information in order to comply with a legal requirement.

You can ask us to correct or amend your information

You have the right to challenge the accuracy of the information we hold about you and request that it is corrected where necessary. We will seek to ensure that corrections are made not only to the data that we hold but also any data held by other organisations or parties that process your data on our behalf.

You can ask us for a copy of the information we hold about you

You are legally entitled to request a list of, or a copy of any information that we hold about you. You can submit a subject access request (SAR).

​Complaints

If you have an enquiry or concern regarding the Government of Jersey processing your personal data you can contact the Central Data Protection Unit.

You can also complain to the Jersey Office of the Information Commissioner about the way your information is being used.