Highway data privacy notice

Your data

Your right to privacy is very important to us and we recognise that, when we collect, use, or store your personal data, you should be able to trust us to act in a responsible manner. This Privacy Notice tells you what you can expect when we process your data, and what your rights are.

Who we are

Our team supports a number of key services concerning highways-related data creation and management within the County Council. We are part of the Highway Asset & Network Management function which sits within the Highways & Built County business area. For some of the services we provide we may need to collect personal data from you.

Managing personal data

We are responsible for managing the information we hold and we recognise that this information is important to you. We take our responsibilities seriously and use personal information fairly, correctly and safely in line with the legal requirements set out by the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). Anyone who receives information from us is also under a legal duty to do the same and has a set of data protection clauses included in their contract. 

Any organisations that process personal information on or behalf Staffordshire County Council, or with whom we share information also has the same legal obligation to comply with GDPR and will have a set of data protection clauses included in their contract or other form of agreement. Because we collect and process personal information about individuals, we are registered as a ‘Data Controller’ under GDPR. Our registered address as Data Controller is:

How we collect personal data

Your data may be collected in various ways, including: email, paper, online forms, verbally, telephone and video recording. Data may be collected directly from you or data about you may be gathered from other sources, and we may need to ask other agencies or organisations for relevant data about you to fulfil our legal responsibilities or to provide services to you. Data we obtain will be captured and stored in our systems for the purpose(s) specified. On most occasions the lawful basis for processing your data will be via your consent as we provide services to you from your request. Occasionally, we may need to process data under a contractual arrangement with another party or as we undertake tasks as a public local authority.

What data we collect and why we collect it

We will use your personal information for a limited number of purposes and always in line with our responsibilities, where there is a legal basis to do so, and in line with your rights under the GDPR. When we collect personal data from you, we will only use it to provide services you have requested or require. We will not collect any personal data from you that we do not need. Our team covers two main functions which could involve the collection of personal data:

• Highway Information: This function provides a response for requests concerning the extent of the highway. Personal data we could collect would include the address of the property/land, contact details for the applicant of the request and when trying to determine if land is highway owned, we may also collect land ownership details.

• Traffic Data: This function provides traffic count data to internal teams and external companies for the purpose of identifying the current traffic volume, speed and vehicle classification in an area. Personal data we could collect would include contact details of the applicant, registrations of vehicles and video from site surveys. Vehicle registrations are collected solely to identify numbers of vehicles (for example, to identify how many times a vehicle has entered/exited a car park). Video recording is done to identify traffic flow at road junctions. These cameras are mounted in such a way as a junction can be seen from all directions. The video recording cannot identify a person’s identity as a pedestrian, driver or passenger in a vehicle, nor can it identify a registration number of a vehicle. The video footage is used to determine traffic count, turning count and pedestrian count numbers.

Who we share your data with

Where necessary, information may be shared with other organisations and partners that provide services on our behalf. In such cases, the information provided is only the minimum necessary to enable them to provide services to you. These organisations are required to retain your information in a secure manner and only use it to undertake the services they provide to you. Organisations we would share data with are our internal teams, the Land Registry, other local authorities, private highway record search companies, traffic consultants and property developers.

What we will not do with your data

We will only share data when it has been provided with consent as part of an application and will only share with parties who will benefit from the data for a specific and requested purpose. We will not disclose it to anyone unnecessarily. In terms of vehicle registration numbers, the information is not correlated to the DVLA so we have no identification as to a driver or owner of a vehicle. Once all registrations are noted, they are counted; the data is anonymised, processed and sent out to either an internal team or external party who will have requested the count data. Specific vehicle registrations are not sent to any party as part of this process.

How long we keep your data for

Data is held until the request or traffic count has been concluded. In the case of difficult land ownership determinations, this timeframe may be longer than expected whilst this investigation takes place.

What are your rights?

Under the GDPR you, as the Data Subject, you have the right to:

• Access the information we hold about you. This information is usually provided free of charge but we may charge depending on the administrative costs of providing the information. You have the right to request this in machine-readable form so that it can, if required, be transferred to a third party.
  
  
• Request that we rectify any information about you that is incorrect. Simple inaccuracies, such as address changes will be made. Depending on the purpose for processing, records (including statements and opinions) may not be changed. However, there may be the option for you to provide a supplementary statement which can be added to our records.
  
  
• Request that records we hold about you are erased.
  
  
• Restrict processing of the information we hold about you if you have an objection to that processing, whilst your objection is investigated.
  
  
• Request that any information that you have provided to us is given back to you in a format that you can give to another service provider if required.
  
  
• Object to processing of your personal information including automated decision making and profiling.
  
  
• Make a complaint to a supervisory authority if you are not satisfied with how the information held about you has been handled.

How to contact us

Please contact us if you have any questions about our Privacy Notice, information we hold about you, or if you have a complaint about privacy or misuse of personal data:

Email: dataprotectionofficer@staffordshire.gov.uk

Post:

If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are not processing your personal data in accordance with the law you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).