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Registration privacy notice

This privacy notice is in relation to our registration booking system.

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 we are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those laws. Our Data Protection Officer is Benjamin Watts.

Personal information we collect and use

Information collected by us

Personal information collected from you in order to register an event is required by law. The main legislation which governs the collection of registration information is the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, the Marriage Act 1949 and the Civil Partnership Act 2004. You may be legally obliged by these acts, and other pieces of legislation, to provide certain pieces of information. If you fail to provide information you are required to give us you may, amongst other things, be liable to a fine, or we may not be able to provide the service you are applying for, such as a marriage or a civil partnership.

Personal information may also be collected from you if you are make an application to this office, for example for a certificate or to correct information contained in a register entry.

The information you provide will be held and processed by registration officers for this registration district.

How long your personal data will be kept

We will hold your personal information for:

  • registration information is retained indefinitely as required by law
  • registration of a birth, death or marriage is a historic record; registers are retained in a repository
  • ceremony paperwork is held for 6 months following the ceremony date
  • legal preliminary paperwork is held for 5 years from date of Notice of Marriage being given
  • Superintendent Registrar's Licence for marriage 2 years from date of marriage
  • notifications of disposal of bodies 5 years from date of death registration
  • applications for copy certificates 1 year from date of application
  • requisitions for registrations that have not been completed 1 year from date of requisition
  • electronic record of appointment for births and deaths 1 year from date of appointment
  • electronic record of ceremony booking 7 years in line with financial requirements.

Reasons we can collect and use your personal information

We rely on processing being necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the data controller is subject as the lawful basis on which we collect and use your personal data.

Who we share your personal information with

A copy of any register entry will be provided by this office in accordance with the law to any applicant, provided they supply enough information to identify the entry concerned and pay the appropriate fee. The copy may only be issued in the form of a paper certified copy (a “certificate”). An application for a certificate may also be made to the General Register Office.

Indexes for events registered at this office are publicly available in order to help members of the public identify the registration record they might need. Indexes are available at the Certificate Centre, Mansion House, Grove Hill Road, Tunbridge Wells, TN1 1EP

A copy of the information collected by a registration officer will also be sent to the Registrar General for England and Wales so that a central record of all registrations can be maintained.

Registration information held at this office may be shared with other organisations in the course of carrying out our functions, or to enable others to perform theirs.

We will only share information where there is a lawful basis to do so for the following reasons:

  • statistical or research purposes
  • administrative purposes by official bodies e.g. ensuring their records are up-to-date in order to provide services to the public
  • fraud prevention or detection, immigration and passport purposes.

Further information on data held by the registration service and a full list of the organisations with whom registration data is shared, the purpose and the lawful basis for sharing the data can be found at kent.gov.uk. Alternatively, staff at this office will be able to provide the information.

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

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:

  • 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 GDPR.

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 send all requests for access to CCTV footage to cctvdisclosures@kent.gov.uk.

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.

The superintendent registrar is a data controller for birth, marriage and death registrations and can be contacted at The Archbishops Palace, Mill Street, Maidstone ME15 6YE.

The local authority is a data controller for civil partnership registrations and can be contacted at Sessions House, County Hall, Maidstone, ME14 1XQ .

The Registrar General for England and Wales is a joint data controller for birth, marriage, death and civil partnership registrations and can be contacted at the General Register Office, Trafalgar Road, Southport, PR8 2HH.

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

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 231113.

Read our corporate privacy statement.