This privacy policy explains how Unpaid Carers Support Southampton uses and protects your personal information.

We may update this policy from time to time. You should check this page regularly to ensure that you are still happy with how we use your personal information. This policy is effective from 7th December 2022.

Who are we?

Unpaid Carers Support is part of Citizens Advice Service Southampton (registered charity no.  1093678). The Unpaid Carers Support Service Southampton is commissioned by Southampton City Council.

For the purposes of data protection law, Southampton City Council are joint controllers of your personal information.

You can find more information about how Southampton City Council uses personal information in the privacy policy on their website: www.southampton.gov.uk/privacy  

Contact

Post: Citizens Advice Southampton, 14-15 Brunswick Place, Southampton, SO15 2AQ

Email: support@unpaidcarers.org.uk

What we collect

We may collect the following personal information from you:

• contact information including your email address, telephone number and home address;
• demographic information such as your age or postcode; and
• other information that you provide to us, including in any surveys that you fill out.

What we do with your personal information

We use your personal information to understand your needs and provide you with our services or information that we think you might find useful, either now or in the future. We may also use your personal information to create anonymised reports for analysis and statistical purposes in order to improve or develop our services.

Whenever we use your personal information data protection law requires us to identify a ‘lawful basis’ for what we do. Our lawful basis for using your personal information in this way is public task and legitimate interests. This is because Unpaid Carers Support Southampton is a service commissioned by Southampton City Council to meet their legal requirements to support carers within Southampton postcodes served by the local authority.

We may also use your personal information to send you our newsletter or other promotional information, including information from third parties that we think you may find interesting. We will only use your personal information in this way if you give us your consent either verbally or in writing. You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time (see ‘Your rights’).

Website and cookies

When you visit the Unpaid Carers Support Southampton website (www.unpaidcarerssupport.org.uk) we may collect some personal information from you. You can find more detail in the terms and conditions for the website which are available to view here.

A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.

We use traffic log cookies on our website to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to your needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and the data is then removed from our system.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website. To block cookies from being used on our website, please change your cookie settings.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. If you choose to follow a link to another site, you should note that we do not have any control over that website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy policy. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy policy on each website that you visit.

Will we share your personal information with anyone else?

We only ever share your personal information with third parties if we are satisfied that it is lawful and fair to do so. We may share your personal information:

• with other teams within Southampton City Council who may be able to provide assistance to you;
• when making a referral to another organisation, if we have your permission;
• if we believe it is necessary to share your personal information with an external agency because there is a risk of significant harm to you or others (for example, to protect your vital interests if we have concerns about your wellbeing);
• with external service providers such as our IT and system administrators;
• with our professional advisers such as our accountants, auditors, bankers, insurers and lawyers;
• if we are under a legal duty to disclose or share your personal information (for example, if required by a court order or for the purposes of prevention of fraud);
• with a regulator (for example, making returns to HMRC or reports to the Charity Commission);
• with a new service provider as part of a transfer of our services or a merger with another organisation.

Security

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. We store your personal information on Southampton City Council’s CareDirector system.

In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure of personal information, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect (e.g. encrypted email systems). We will NEVER ASK YOU TO DISCLOSE ANY PASSWORDS to us directly.

We do not transfer your personal information outside the UK or the European Economic Area.

How long do we keep your personal information?

We will keep your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements.

We normally keep personal information relating to Carer’s Assessments for 3 years and all other information for 2 years after our last communication with you. We may retain your personal information for a longer period if we are investigating a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of a legal claim connected to our relationship with you.

Your rights

You have the right to:

• Access to your personal information (commonly known as a subject access request). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Ask us to correct personal information that we hold about you which is incorrect, incomplete or inaccurate.

In certain circumstances, you also have the right to:

• Ask us to erase your personal information from our files and systems where there is no good reason for us continuing to hold it.
• Object to us using your personal information for public task purposes, to further our legitimate interests (or those of a third party), or where we are using your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
• Ask us to restrict or suspend the use of your personal information, for example, if you want us to establish its accuracy or our reasons for using it.
• Ask us to transfer your personal informationto another person or organisation.

You also have rights in relation to automated decision making which has a legal effect or otherwise significantly affects you. We do not currently carry out any automated processing of your personal information in a way which could produce significant legal effects concerning you.

If you want to exercise any of these rights, please write to:

Data Protection Lead, Citizens Advice Southampton, 14-15 Brunswick Place, Southampton, SO15 2AQ  or email support@unpaidcarers.org.uk

We may need to request more information from you to help us confirm your identity. This is a security measure to ensure that personal information is kept secure. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response. 

Complaints

If for any reason you are unhappy with our use of your personal information, please contact us and we will work with you to try to resolve the issue.

You have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the supervisory authority for data protection in the UK. You can do so via their website (https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/), starting a live chat or by calling their helpline on 0303 123 1113. 

This policy has been reviewed and updated on 7th December 2022.