How we use your information

This privacy notice tells you what to expect when Services for Young People, part of Hertfordshire County Council, collects personal information. It applies to information we collect about:

• visitors to our websites 
• people who use our services, e.g. who subscribe to one of our newsletters or request a publication from us 
• people who send us an enquiry or a comment 
• people who notify us under the Data Protection Act 
• job applicants and our current and former employees

Visitors to our websites

When someone visits http://www.youngprideinherts.org, we collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. We collect this information in a way which does not identify anyone. We do not make any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our website. We will not associate any data gathered from this site with any personally identifying information from any source. If we do want to collect personally identifiable information through our website, we will be up front about this. We will make it clear when we collect personal information and will explain what we intend to do with it.

Use of cookies

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.

We allow you to choose the categories of cookies that we store on your computer both when you first visit our site, and at any time at the bottom of the page. You can choose between four categories, from strictly necessary and functional cookies to tracking and targeting cookies.

The table below explains the cookies we use and why.                                                                                                                     

Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

YouTube cookies

We occasionally embed videos from the YouTube channel using YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode. This mode may set cookies on your computer once you click on the YouTube video player, but YouTube will not store personally-identifiable cookie information for playbacks of embedded videos using the privacy-enhanced mode. To find out more please visit YouTube’s embedding videos information page.

Twitter cookies

We use Twitter embeds around the site to show you our latest tweets. Twitter stores third party cookies on your computer. We disable our Twitter embeds when you choose Strictly Necessary & Performance cookies only to prevent these third party cookies.

People who contact us through the website's contact us form

When we receive a message from a person we will hold a record of the enquiry, either answering it directly or forwarding it to the appropriate person within Hertfordshire County Council for that person to answer it. This normally contains the identity of the enquirer and any other individuals involved in the enquiry.

We will only use the personal information we collect to process the enquiry and to check on the level of service we provide. We do compile and publish statistics showing information like the number of enquiries we receive, but not in a form which identifies anyone.

We usually have to disclose the enquirer’s identity and certain other details to whoever will answer the enquiry. This is inevitable where, for example, the town of residence needs to be known in order to provide an accurate response. If an enquirer doesn’t want information identifying him or her to be disclosed, we will try to respect that. However, it may not be possible to handle an enquiry on an anonymous basis, especially if the nature of the enquiry is a complaint.

We will keep personal information contained in files in line with our retention policy. This means that information relating to a complaint will be retained for a maximum of four years from closure. It will be retained in a secure environment and access to it will be restricted according to the ‘need to know’ principle.

When the enquiry is from a young person, and where a record of the enquiry may help our staff to provide a better service on a future occasion, the enquirer’s details may be added to our database of records.

Complaints or queries

Services for Young People tries to meet the highest standards when collecting and using personal information. For this reason, we take any complaints we receive about this very seriously. We encourage people to bring it to our attention if they think that our collection or use of information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate. We would also welcome any suggestions for improving our procedures.

This privacy notice was drafted with brevity and clarity in mind. It does not provide exhaustive detail of all aspects of our collection and use of personal information. However, we are happy to provide any additional information or explanation needed. Any requests for this should be sent to the address below.

Access to personal information

Services for Young People tries to be as open as it can be in terms of giving people access to their personal information. Individuals can find out if we hold any personal information by making a 'subject access request' under the Data Protection Act 1998. If we do hold information about you we will:

• give you a description of it; 
• tell you why we are holding it; 
• tell you who it could be disclosed to; and 
• let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.

To make a request to Services for Young People for any personal information we may hold, you need to put the request in writing to the address provided below.

If you agree, we will try to deal with your request informally, for example by providing you with the specific information you need over the telephone.

If we do hold information about you, you can ask us to correct any mistakes by, once again, contacting the address below.

Disclosure of personal information

In many circumstances we will not disclose personal data without consent. However when we investigate a complaint, for example, we may need to share personal information with a partner agency if the complaint relates to them.

You can also get further information on:

• circumstances where we can pass on personal data without consent for example, to safeguard young people and to produce anonymised statistics; 
• our instructions to staff on how to collect, use and delete personal data; and 
• how we check that the information we hold is accurate and up to date.

Links to other websites

This privacy notice does not cover the links within this site linking to other websites. We encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit.

Changes to this privacy notice

We keep our privacy notice under regular review. This privacy notice was last updated on 23rd January 2018.

How to contact us

Requests for information about our privacy policy can be emailed to sfyp.website@hertfordshire.gov.uk or sent in writing to:

Room 21
County Hall
Pegs Lane
Hertford
SG13 8DF

Or: http://www.hertfordshire.gov.uk/contact/
Data Protection Team Hertfordshire County Council CH0150 County Hall Pegs Lane Hertford SG13 8DQ