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Kent’s Plan Bee Public Perception Survey privacy notice

We keep this privacy notice under regular review and was last updated on 26 April 2021.

Kent County Council 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.

Who we are

Kent County Council collects, uses and is responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are regulated under the General Data Protection Regulation which applies across the European Union (including in the United Kingdom) and the Data Protection Act 2018. We are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information. Our Data Protection Officer is Benjamin Watts.

Kent's Plan Bee is a pollinator action plan which has been developed by the council to take the lead and encourage local communities to improve the food sources and general habitat for pollinators in Kent. One of the objectives of the action plan is “To mobilise the people of Kent, to take action themselves. Kent’s Plan Bee aims to help them to have a greater awareness of the importance of pollinators in all our lives and everybody’s need and ability to act to protect them”. As part of this objective, we have designed a Public Perception Survey to determine the public’s current thoughts on pollinators and use this information to potentially inform future services in the best ways to benefit pollinators.

Personal information we collect and use

Information collected by us

In the course of this perception survey, we collect the following personal information when you provide it to us:

  • Partial postcode details
  • Age
  • Email address
  • Your knowledge, beliefs and feelings on pollinators.

The giving of these data is optional.

How we use your personal information

We use your personal information to:

  • With your consent to do so, add you to our mailing list, to receive future news about pollinators
  • Contact you if you provide your email address with regards to Kent's Plan Bee Action Plan only, to provide you with business alerts, news, information, and event details. Your email address will not be passed onto any other third party or used for any other purpose.
  • Research and inform/guide KCC services on how to best benefit pollinators and the public.

Reasons we can collect and use your personal information

The lawful basis on which we collect and use your personal data is that ‘processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest’. Secondary to this, your consent is given when you request to be included in the distribution of these messages, so the lawful basis on which we collect and use your personal data is that ‘the data subject has given consent to the processing of their personal data.’

How long your personal data will be kept

We will hold your partial address and age for 6 months from the end of the survey (31 May to 1 December 2021). After this time, it will be deleted.

We will hold your email address for up to 3 years (May 2024), or until you unsubscribe from our mailing list.

Who we share your personal information with

We will be collecting your data through Microsoft Forms, where your data will be collated and temporarily stored on a password protected Microsoft account as an Excel spreadsheet until the end of the survey (from 1 May to 31 May 2021). After this time, it will be downloaded to the KCC server as a password protected Excel spreadsheet with only three members of Kent’s Plan Bee team having access to this information. The information will then be removed from Microsoft Forms by the 4 June 2021.

We will share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities if required by applicable law or in connection with legal proceedings.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you have a number of rights which you can access 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
  • 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:

  • object to how we are using your information
  • 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
  • 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 the General Data Protection Regulation.

If you would like to exercise a right, please contact the Information Resilience and Transparency Team at data.protection@kent.gov.uk .

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.

Who to 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.

GDPR also gives you right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner who may be contacted on 03031 23 11 13.

Read our corporate privacy statement.