Environmental and Consumer Protection Privacy Policy (Food & Public Health and Housing & Nuisance)

​​​​Introduction

The Food and Public Health and Housing and Nuisance teams are​ registered as ‘data controllers’ under the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018 (Ref number 15801) as we collect and process personal information about you.  We are part of Environmental and Consumer Protection in the Regulation Directorate, which sits under Infrastructure and Environment.

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, email, or by a member of our staff, or in some cases, by another Government department.

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.

The information we collect about you

We collect a variety of information about you, including:

• your name
• email address
• telephone number
• your postal address
• date of birth
• date of death
• landlord / owner / responsible person information relating to dwellings
  
• signature
• location of your work
• your occupation
• your travel records
• records of the food you have eaten
• medical information
• financial information
• your business name/trading name
• activities you have undertaken
• your property portfolio details
• your professional qualifications 
• contact you have had with animals
• contact you have had with other people
• details of goods you are importing
  

Why we collect information about you

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

• investigate complaints about food hygiene, safety or labelling standards
• administer food hygiene and safety standards
• provide Health Certificates for export of food
• process personal import / export of food items
• investigate notifications of infectious disease
• investigate statutory nuisance complaints
• carry out swimming pool inspections
• investigate and monitor contaminated land in relation to health impacts
• investigate complaints regarding defective private drainage
• comment on alcohol licensing and places of refreshment licensing
• attend exhumations
• investigate complaints of “filthy and /or verminous” premises
• investigate referrals about safeguarding
• investigate complaints of housing disrepair and unfitness
• undertake proactive housing inspections such as ‘staying put’ (individual focused)
• undertake proactive housing inspections such as ‘Rent Safe’ (business focused)
  
• issue licences for rented dwellings
  
• enforce tobacco control legislation
• provide advice on portable water supplies
• carry out quality monitoring of vehicles
• provide advice on pest control issues
• manage and regulate water quality
  
• inspect goods that you have imported
  

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 service you have requested
• to monitor and improve our performance in responding to your service request
• to ensure that we meet our legal obligations
• where necessary for our law enforcement functions
• to prevent and detect crime
• where necessary to protect individuals from harm or injury
• to allow the statistical analysis of data so we can plan the provision of services

We may not be able to provide you with a service unless we have enough information or your permission to use your information.

We will not pass any personal data on to anyone outside of the Government of Jersey, other than those who either process information on our behalf, or because of a 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.

Data processing

We use the following organisations to process information on our behalf.

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

We do not currently process any personal data overseas using web services that are hosted outside the European Economic Area.

Data sharing

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. 

*and all subordinate legislation

Other forms of sharing

If we need to disclose any sensitive or confidential information about you, we will only do so if absolutely necessary and where we are legally required to do so or once we have obtained your consent where appropriate. 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 or 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 and/or in the Jersey Gazette for the following reasons:

• where you have asked us to publish your information, for example where a landlord is a sole trader but wants to appear on the Government of Jersey Rent Safe register to show they hold an accredited rating

• where we are required to provide statistical information about a group of people; although your data will be anonymised to protect your identity

• where you have responded to a public consultation, although your comments 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.  You can view our retention schedules on-line​​. 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 schedules.

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 do not record or monitor any telephone calls you make to us using recording equipment, although if you leave a message on our voicemail systems your message will be kept until we are able to return your call or make a note of your message. File notes of when and why you called may be taken for record keeping purposes. 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; to comply with a legal obligation, or where permitted under other legislation.

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, or where permitted under other legislation.

Your rights

You can ask us to stop processing your information

You have the right to request that we 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/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) using our online form.

However where our records are not held in a way that easily identifies you, for example a land registry, we may not be able to provide you with a copy of your information, although we will do everything we can to comply with your request.

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.