Public Health Surveys

The London Borough of Hounslow is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. Through this Privacy Notice we have sought to be as transparent as possible and fully explain how your personal data is held and processed.

This privacy notice applies to services provided by Public Health team insight gathering team and tells you what to expect us to do with your personal information.

If you have any questions about this privacy notice or any concerns about how we process your data, please contact publichealth@hounslow.gov.uk. The privacy notice will continue to be monitored and updated. You are advised to check this page from time to time.

What type of information we have

We currently collect and process the following information:

Gender
Age
Ward or first part of post code
Ethnicity
Religion
Health-related data (e.g., heigh, weight, BMI, health conditions, health behaviours),
data concerning a person's sex life or sexual orientation.

How do we get your information?

Most of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by you for one of the following reasons:

you may give us your personal data by filling in forms or taking part in interviews, focus groups, or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email.
You may provide personal data when you complete a survey or give us feedback

The Public Health service will access this data and health related information to analyse the health needs and outcomes of the local population and for monitoring trends and patterns of diseases and the associated risk factors. It is used to carry out and support:

health needs assessments
health equity analysis
commissioning and delivery of services to promote health and prevent ill health
public health surveillance, e.g., immunization rates
identifying inequalities in the way people access services
joint strategic needs assessment
health protection (e.g., COVID-19 infections, measles outbreak) and other partnership activities which promote health and prevent ill health (e.g. with the hospital)

If it is not disproportionate or prejudicial, we’ll contact you to let you know we are processing your personal information.

Our Lawful basis for processing your information

The lawful basis we rely on for processing this information is set out in Section 42(4) of the Statistics and Registration Service Act (2007) as amended by section 287 of the Health and Social Care Act (2012) and Regulation 3 of the Health Service (Control of Patient Information) Regulations 2002. Our lawful basis we rely on for processing personal data is:

Public Task.

If the information you provide us contains special category data, such as health, religious or ethnic information the legal basis we rely on to process is

reasons of public interest in the area of public health, Article 9(2)(i).

Under the data protection legislation, we must identify an additional basis under schedule 1 part 1 of the Data Protection Act. For the purposes of this privacy notice, we have identified reasons of public interest in the area of public health, under s3.

It is completely optional to take part in data collection (e.g., surveys, interviews). As the data is pseudonymised, we will not be able to remove your data.

Why we need your information (purposes of processing

The personal data we collect will be used for the following purposes:

For health and wellbeing service planning by understanding you and your community's needs and to provide the relevant services to meet them
To understand what we can do for you and your community and raise awareness of other relevant services and benefits
To research to understand your needs and evaluate the effectiveness of services
To help build up a picture of how we are performing at delivering services to you
For analysis of costs and spend of services we provide, so that we can ensure better and efficient use of public funds

Who your information may be shared with (internally and externally)

We share your aggregated information with:

internal health and social care teams

commissioned services which provide health and wellbeing services (e.g., Hounslow and Richmond Community Health NHS Trust)

We share your pseudonymised information with:

internal business intelligence teams
In some instances, Hounslow Healthwatch (Your Voice in Social Care) will work on our behalf to collect this data and share it with us

We will strive to ensure that any personal data in our care will be kept safe and We share your aggregated information with:

How long we keep your information

We keep these data sets for one year.

We will then dispose your information in the most secure manner possible.

Transfers to third countries

All the information you provide us is held within the UK & European Economic Area

Business Intelligence, Profiling and Analysis

We may analyse your personal information to improve the council’s services for the following purposes:

undertake statutory functions efficiently and effectively
service planning by understanding your needs and your community's needs and to provide the services that you or your community request
understanding what we can do for you and your community and inform you of other relevant services and benefits
help us to build up a picture of how we are performing at delivering services to you and what services the people of Hounslow need
analysis of costs and spend of services we provide so that we can ensure better and efficient use of public funds

The council is committed to using pseudonymised or anonymised information where practical, and in many cases this will be the default position.

Pseudonymisation is a procedure by which the most identifying fields within a data record are replaced by one or more artificial identifiers, or pseudonyms. There can be a single pseudonym for a collection of replaced fields or a pseudonym per replaced field. An example of this is your National Insurance number or Council Tax Reference number.

Anonymisation is the process of removing identifying particulars or details. This means that the data cannot be linked back to identify you.

Your data protection rights

The rights available to you depend on our reason for processing your information. For further information about your data protection rights and how to make a request, please see ‘Your rights’

Your right to make a complaint

The Council tries to meet the highest standards when collecting and using personal information. For this reason, we take any complaints we receive about this very seriously. We encourage people to bring it to our attention if they think that our collection or use of information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate.

If you want to make a complaint you can contact us on:

Complaints Team
London Borough of Hounslow
Hounslow House,
7 Bath Road,
TW3 3EB

Data Protection Officer

The Council’s Data Protection Officer can be contacted on:

InformationGovernance@hounslow.gov.uk

Information Governance Team
London Borough of Hounslow
Hounslow House,
7 Bath Road,
TW3 3EB

Information Commissioner’s Office

The Information Commissioner is the UK's independent body set up to uphold information rights.

If you would like to know more about your rights under the Data Protection law, and what you should expect, visit the Information Commissioner’s website: https://ico.org.uk/

If you have any concerns regarding any privacy practices or about exercising your Data Protection rights, you may contact the Information Commissioner’s Office:

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Telephone: 0303 123 1113 or 01625 545 745

Email: casework@ico.org.uk

A full list of what information we control and process and for what purposes is set out in our notification with the Information Commissioner's Register of Data Controllers. Our registration number is Z5761176. You can view our registration on the Information Commissioner's website.

Published date: 12 April 2022