Privacy Notice for Trading Standards

Information about our privacy notice and how the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s Trading Standards team processes your data in accordance with legal requirements.

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea records information about customers, suppliers and others it deals with. This notice gives more specific details about how the Trading Standards team use such data.

We do not do any automated decision making, and more information is contained in the Council's Primary Privacy Notice.

This notice explains:

• why we need the data
• what the team does with it
• why they are permitted to do it
• how long they store data for
• whether it could be shared with others, and
• what your rights are

Why we need the data

Trading Standards mainly enforce criminal laws that are meant to encourage fairer trading. They may be about the quantity, price or description of goods and services. They may also be about the safety of goods you buy. We achieve this by:

• advising local businesses
• investigating complaints
• working with other agencies such as the police
• working proactively
• prosecuting where necessary.

Data is kept to enable us to perform these roles, and to account for actions where required.

What we do with it

We record complaints we have received, including details about the business and the complainant. This allows us to identify businesses that are generating more complaints than we would expect, and it allows us to contact a complainant, or a business, if we need to investigate further.

We also record details of actions such as visits to premises and discussions with experts, complainants and businesses, so that we have an accurate record of what was done. This can be used if a prosecution is necessary, but primarily enables us to account for what we have done. It also ensures that there is a proper record of advice given to consumers or traders.

Why we are permitted to process the data

The Data Protection Act 2018 requires organisations processing data to do so only if they have a lawful basis for doing so. For Trading Standards, the lawful basis is that we are complying with legal obligations and performing public duties.

There is a list of the main legislation that we enforce in Annexe A at the end of this notice.

How long we keep the data

We will only retain your personal information long enough to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including satisfying any future legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

We retain necessary information in accordance with our corporate records policy to fulfil legal, statutory and regulatory requirements.

Can the data be shared with others

The data can be shared with others if we are legally compelled by a court order to do so.

We also share the information with other enforcement bodies if they have the legal power to demand it, or if we believe that a partner agency such as the police require it for law enforcement. We also share information with those who have a right to ask for it to protect their intellectual property.

Data may also be shared, as required, when prosecuting offenders.

Your rights

Access, correction, erasure, and restriction

You have the right to:

• ask for your information using what is known as a subject access request that we handle in accordance with this policy
• ask for your information to be corrected if it is inaccurate or incomplete
• ask for your information to be deleted or removed where there is no need for us to keep it (right to be forgotten)
• ask us to restrict the use of your information
• ask us to copy or transfer your information from one IT system to another in a safe and secure way without impacting the quality of the information
• object to how your information is used
• challenge any decisions made without human intervention (automated decision making).

These rights may be restricted if the request would prevent us from enforcing the law or apprehending offenders, or prevent us from performing a legal obligation.

You will not have to pay to exercise these rights. However we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is, in our view, unreasonable or involves an excessive amount of work. You will be told if this is the case. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.

Right to withdraw consent

We process information mainly to perform legal obligations and public functions. But where the processing depends on consent, you have the right to withdraw it at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of our processing prior to that withdrawal. Doing so may mean that we cannot take any matter further.

If you wish to withdraw consent, please put your request in writing to [email protected], we will process it within 14 days.

Other rights

You also have a right to be informed about how and why your personal information is being processed. This notice fulfils that obligation.

Full details are contained within the Council's Primary Privacy Notice.

To ask for access to your information you should contact [email protected]

Data Protection Officer

If you wish to raise a concern or discuss any aspect of this notice please contact our Data Protection Officer.

If you are unhappy with the way that we handle your concern you may complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).

The Information Commissioner's Office deals with concerns and complaints relating to data protection and freedom of information legislation.

Changes to this privacy notice

We may update or revise this privacy notice from time to time and we will provide supplementary privacy information as is necessary.

For a list of the legislation that Trading Standards enforces please contact us: [email protected]