Privacy notice for Electoral Services

What do we use the information for?

Electoral services collect, process and hold your personal information in order to provide our services effectively.

• To produce the electoral register
• To manage elections
• To enable people to vote
• To enable parties and candidates to participate in elections.

We recognise that your personal information is important to you, and we take our responsibilities for ensuring that we collect and manage it proportionately, correctly and safely very seriously.

What information do we hold and use?

We collect and process the following information for electoral registration purposes:

• Personal information (including full name, full residential address, date of birth)
• Characteristics (such as race, disability) 
• Identifiable information (including National Insurance Number).
• The relationship of any proxy voter to you. 

We also collect data on electoral registration and on election staff, so that we can employ them to conduct electoral duties. Political parties and candidates are required to provide information when they wish to stand for election. 

On what grounds do we use the information?

We are required to collect this information as part of our public functions and powers that are set out in UK law or the performance of specific tasks in the public interest, also set out in UK law. We do this so we can determine if you are eligible to vote, and to record you as a legitimate voter. The following is a list of all primary legislation relevant to the collection, processing and retention of personal data by electoral services:

• Local Government Act 1972
• Representation of the People Act 1983
• Electoral Administration Act 2006
  
• Electoral Administration Act 2013
• Electoral Registration (Disclosure of Electoral Registers) Regulations 2013
  
• European Parliamentary Elections Regulations 2004
  
• European Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) Regulations 2009
• Local Elections (Principal Areas) Rules 2006
• Neighbourhood Planning (Referendums) Regulations 2012.

We process personal data for the following reasons:

• GDPR Article 6(1)(e) – processing is necessary for the performance or task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller; and
• GDPR Article 6(1)(c) – processing is necessary for compliance with legal obligation to which the East Riding of Yorkshire Council is subject.

We process special category data for the following reason:

• GDPR Article 9(2)(a) - the data subject has given explicit consent to the processing of those personal data for one or more specified purposes, except where Union or Member State law provide that the prohibition referred to in paragraph 1 may not be lifted by the data subject.

How do we collect this information?

We may collect information in the following ways:

• Paper, electronic or online forms
• Email
• Telephone
• Face-to-face, with one of our employees, or one of our partners.

Who do we share your information with?

The information you provide is held in two electoral registers – the full electoral register and the edited register. These registers are managed by electoral registration officers.

The full register is published once a year, and updated every month. This is supplied to the following people and organisations:

• British Library
• UK Statistics Authority 
• Electoral Commission 
• Boundary Commission for England 
• Jury Summoning Bureau 
• Elected representatives (MPs. MEPs, local Councillors) 
• Police and Crime Commissioner 
• Candidates standing for election
• Local and national political parties and registered campaigners 
• Parish and Community Councils 
• Police forces and the National Crime Agency 
• Local authority’s public library and / or archive services 
• Government departments or bodies 
• Credit reference agencies  
• National Fraud Initiative.

We also disclose your information to our software providers and contracted printers for the purposes of carrying out our duties in relation to electoral registration and elections. It is a crime for anyone who has a copy of the full register to pass information from this register on to others if they do not have a lawful reason for so doing. 

What is the full register?

The full register contains the name and address of all registered electors. Anyone can inspect the full electoral register under supervision. They can take extracts from the register but only as handwritten notes. In accordance with data protection legislation, information taken must not be used for direct marketing purposes unless it has been published in the edited version of the register. Anyone who fails to observes these conditions is committing a criminal offence and may be charged a penalty of up to £5,000.

What is the edited register? 

The edited register contains the same information as the full register but is not used for elections or referendums. It is possible to opt-out of the edited register. It is updated and published every month and can be sold to any person, organisation or company who requests this, for a wide range of purposes. It is used by businesses and charities for checking names and address details. 

It is important to note that your personal details (name and address) are included in the edited version of the register by default; unless you ask for them to be removed. Removing your details from the edited register will not affect your right to vote. 

How long do we store it and is it secure?

Electoral services has a retention schedule in place to ensure that information is only held for as long as it is needed. We will not keep your information for longer than is required to by law. Your information will be disposed of in a controlled and secure manner in accordance with the council’s Records Management and Data Quality Policy. The council’s IT security and confidentiality policies ensure that your information is protected, and accessed only by staff directly involved in your case.  

For information on how long your information will be held, visit the retention page.

What rights do you have?

The rights that you have depend upon the grounds upon which we collected your information. All of the rights you could have are outlined on the data protection rights page. 

In most cases, people who have been registered with electoral services will have the following rights:

• The right of access - you are entitled to see the information the service holds about you.
• The right to rectification - we will amend information accordingly, if any information that the service holds about you is incorrect. 
• The right to restrict processing - you may wish to limit how we use your data.
• The right to object - in addition to the right to limit the use of your data, you also have a right to object to the use of your data for certain actions. 
• The right to erasure / right to be forgotten - in certain circumstances, you may be able to ask for some of the information we hold to be deleted. The service has determined that all requests to permanently delete a service user record will be dealt with on an individual basis.

To exercise any of your above rights, please visit the data protection rights pages for more information.

Where can I find out more?

If you want to know more about how the council uses information, your rights or have a concern about the way we are collecting or using your personal data, we request that you raise your concern with us in the first instance; contact details are available on the general privacy information page. Alternatively, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO is the UK’s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest and they handle public concerns regarding organisations information rights practices. 

Information Commissioner’s Office (external website)  

Electoral services are a Data Controller and have a separate registration to the council (Z8292930) with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO).

When was this privacy notice last updated?

We will continually review and update this privacy notice to reflect changes in our services, feedback from customers, and to comply with any changes in the law.  This privacy notice was last updated on 15 September 2021.