Participants of KCC Infant Feeding Strategy Development privacy notice

We keep this privacy notice under regular review and it was last updated in October 2023.

Kent County Council (KCC) respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy notice will inform you as to how we look after your personal data and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you. You can view an easy read version of this privacy notice .

Who we are

KCC collects, uses and is responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are regulated under the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018). We are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information. Our Data Protection Officer is Benjamin Watts.

KCC has commissioned Better Breastfeeding Ltd as the provider of the development of a strategy for infant feeding. This work will involve working with parents and carers of babies (or those expecting a baby) as well as professionals and voluntary sector organisations in Kent. Our aim is to develop our Infant Feeding Strategy to guide our work in making sure all babies receive the best start in life.

Personal information we collect and use

Information collected by us

• Name
• Email address
• Phone number
• Your postcode and when you gave birth (so we can make sure we are representing the widest possible views of families living in Kent)
• Your age
• Where you gave birth
• When your baby/babies were born.

Your name, email address and phone number will only be requested if you choose to enter our prize draw, or express interest in taking part in further engagement opportunities, and consent to be contacted for this purpose.

Special category information

If you consent to take part in the project, either online survey, 1:1 discussion or in a small group, we will also collect and process the following ‘special category data’ (personal data which is more sensitive and is treated with extra care and protection) when you provide it to us:

• Your ethnicity.
• Any accessibility, dietary and health requirements relevant to your participation.
• Your experience of infant feeding, which may for example include details of health conditions that you choose to share with us and which services you have used.

We will take notes during our discussion. During the discussion, it is possible that other information may be collected as you share information about your experience, perhaps because of your race, ethnicity, health or religious beliefs.

How we use your personal information

We use the information that you have given us in order to:

• administer the project, for example running the prize draw for our survey, contacting you to invite you to sessions or sending you updates on the project
• ensure that our sessions are accessible and that we can cater to your individual needs (for example if you have dietary requirements or specific needs to help you engage in the project)
• ensure that our project is inclusive and includes participants from a range of backgrounds
• publish the results from this study but this will not involve sharing any personal or identifiable information.

Reasons we can collect and use your personal data

We collect and use your personal information to carry out tasks with your consent. We rely on the following legal bases under UK GDPR:

• Article (6)(1)(a) - Consent: the individual has given clear consent to process their personal data for a specific purpose

When we collect your ‘special categories of personal data’, (such as health information) we rely on the following legal bases:

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

How long your personal data will be kept

We keep your personal and special category data for the duration of the project, and up to 6 months after the publication of the relevant report(s) that your data was collected to inform (until June 2024), after which any personal data is made inaccessible to system users or securely destroyed. We may keep some fully anonymised data for up to 5 years where we have a specific use for it, such as to provide examples for educational purposes. This anonymised data is deleted after 5 years, or earlier if we do not have a specific use for it.

Who we share your personal information with

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have rights which you can exercise free of charge which allow you to:

• know what we are doing with your information and why we are doing it
• ask to see what information we hold about you (subject access request)
• ask us to correct any mistakes in the information we hold about you
• object to direct marketing
• make a complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office.

Depending on our reason for using your information you may also be entitled to:

• ask us to delete information we hold about you
• have your information transferred electronically to yourself or to another organisation
• object to decisions being made that significantly affect you
• object to how we are using your information
• stop us using your information in certain ways.

We will always seek to comply with your request however we may be required to hold or use your information to comply with legal duties. Please note, your request may delay or prevent us delivering a service to you.

For further information about your rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, see the guidance from the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) on individuals’ rights under UK GDPR.

Your right to withdraw your consent

Where we rely on your consent to process your personal information, you can withdraw your consent to our use of your data at any time. You can do this by emailing info@betterbreastfeeding.uk or phone 07790 032620.

If you decide that you no longer want to be involved, we will try to remove any quotes from you that we may otherwise have used, however your contributions to workshops will have been anonymised and/or findings may have been published and so it may not be possible to remove all of your input from the work.

Keeping your personal information secure

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

Contact

Please contact the Information Resilience and Transparency Team at data.protection@kent.gov.uk to exercise any of your rights, or if you have a complaint about why your information has been collected, how it has been used or how long we have kept it for.

You can contact our Data Protection Officer, Benjamin Watts, at dpo@kent.gov.uk or write to: Data Protection Officer, Sessions House, Maidstone, Kent ME14 1XQ.

UK GDPR also gives you right to lodge a complaint with Information Commissioner, who may be contacted via the Information Commissioner's website or call 03031 231113.

Read our corporate privacy statement.