Privacy

The Future Tiverton website is provided by Tiverton Town Council and is subject to the Council’s published privacy statement. This page explains what that means for this website.

Tiverton Town Council is the data controller for the information you give us here. To ask about your information, or about anything on this page, write to the Council at the address at the foot of this page, or email assistant@tivertontowncouncil.gov.uk.

Sharing an idea

You can send us an idea through the ideas form on this website, or by email, by post or in person. We keep what you tell us about your idea: a short summary, more detail if you give it, which of the Strategic Plan’s priorities it could help with, and whether you could help make it happen.

Giving your name, email address, phone number or organisation is up to you. If you do, we use them only to tell you what we decide about your idea, and to ask you about it if we need to. If you also say you would like an email when a project your idea goes into moves to its next stage, we use your email address for that too, and you can ask us to stop at any time. We never publish them. The form tells you when we will delete them. Copies in our backups are deleted within 30 days of that.

Your idea is read by the Council staff and councillors who look after the Council’s list of projects. When we decide what to do with it, we publish the decision and the reason on this website, with a short summary of the idea, usually in our own words. We publish your own words as you wrote them only when a member of staff has read them and they say nothing about who you are or about anyone else. We never publish your name or contact details.

The ideas form also asks some questions about you, which you do not have to answer (see Questions about you).

Our lawful basis for this is that it is part of our public task: planning the town’s future projects with the people who live and work here. We keep ideas in line with the Council’s data retention policy, and then delete them. Copies in our backups are deleted within 30 days of that.

Asking about a decision or a project

If you ask us a question about a decision on an idea, or ask a project’s team a question from the project’s page, we keep your question, and your name and email address if you give them, so that we can answer you. We do not publish your question or your details. If several people ask the same thing, we may publish a question and answer on the idea’s or the project’s page, written in our own words, without anyone’s name or anything else that could show who asked. We delete your question, your details and our answer 12 months after we answer it (or close it), or 12 months after you sent it if we have done neither. Copies in our backups are deleted within 30 days of that.

Surveys on this website

Our surveys, including the consultation survey, run on this website. We do not use another company’s survey service, and your answers are kept on the Council’s website and nowhere else.

When you answer a survey, we store:

• the answers you give
• the date and time you started and finished
• where you followed the link from, if the link says so (for example, a leaflet or an email from us)

You can take part without giving your name. If a survey asks for your name, address or contact details, it says what they are for, and we use them only for that.

Our lawful basis for running a survey and keeping your answers is that it is part of our public task: consulting the town and planning its services. Where a survey asks whether we may keep in touch with you, we rely on your consent, and you can withdraw it at any time by contacting us: we then stop using your contact details for that.

Your answers are saved as you go, so that you can stop and carry on later on the same phone, tablet or computer. If you leave a survey before the end, the answers you had given by then may be kept and counted as a part-finished response. Answers that are not kept in this way are deleted seven days after you started.

If you fill in a paper form, a member of staff types your answers into the same system, and they are kept in the same way.

Who sees your answers

Your answers are read by the Council staff and councillors working on the consultation. Each member of staff has a sign-in of their own, and we keep a record of who downloads or deletes responses. Each attempt to sign in, whether it succeeds or not, is recorded with the network address it came from. The address is removed from the record after 12 months, and the records themselves are kept in line with the Council’s data retention policy. Answers may be summarised or quoted in public reports about the consultation. We will not publish your name or contact details.

Questions about you

Some surveys ask a few questions about you: for example your age group, your sex, your ethnic group, your religion, your sexual orientation, whether you have a long-term health condition, whether you are pregnant or have recently given birth, or whether you look after someone. We ask so that we can see who we are hearing from and who we are not reaching. That is part of our duty under the Equality Act 2010.

You never have to answer these questions. Each one can be left empty or answered “Prefer not to say”, and a survey that has them lets you pass over all of them at once.

We take extra care with these answers, and we do not publish any of them in a way that could show who gave them. Your age group is kept with the rest of your answers, so that we can see what people of different ages think. We count your other answers about yourself together, and anything you type in answer to them is read by our staff in an alphabetical list, with nothing to show who wrote it. None of this is shown until at least ten people have answered. Our pages never show these answers with the rest of yours, and the spreadsheets our staff download never put them beside your other answers: if a member of staff asks for them, they come on a separate sheet, question by question, as totals and an alphabetical list of what was typed, so that nobody’s answers are ever together.

Your answers to the questions about your sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, health, ethnic group, religion, pregnancy and whether you look after someone are kept apart from the rest of your answers, with nothing to link them back to you, whether or not the form also asks for your name or contact details. We look at them as totals, and at anything you typed in answer to them in an alphabetical list, never with anything that says whose it is. This also means that we cannot find them to delete them if you ask, because nothing says they are yours.

Our lawful basis for asking is that it is part of our public task: the public sector equality duty in section 149 of the Equality Act 2010. Some of these answers (about your health, including pregnancy, and your ethnic group, religion or sexual orientation) are special category data. We process them because that is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest, under paragraph 8 of Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 2018, which covers identifying or keeping under review equality of opportunity or treatment, and we hold an appropriate policy document for this.

One response each

So that a survey is not answered many times by one person, your browser remembers that you have taken part (see Cookies, below). A survey may also count how many responses come from one internet connection, and our ideas form counts how many come from one connection in an hour. To do that we keep a scrambled code made from your network address (IP address). We do not keep the address itself, and the code is not stored with your answers. Where only the last hour is counted, as on the ideas form, the code is deleted after an hour; otherwise it is deleted four weeks after the survey closes, or when it is archived if that is sooner. While you are part-way through a survey we also keep a scrambled code made from your network address beside your answers so far, so that no one internet connection can fill the site with unfinished responses; it is deleted as soon as you finish, or when your unfinished answers are.

How long we keep survey responses

We keep survey responses in line with the Council’s data retention policy, and then delete them. Copies made for backup are deleted within 30 days. The web server’s own log of visits, which records network addresses, is kept for 30 days.

Children and young people

This part is for you if you are under 18. Whatever your age, you can share an idea or answer our surveys, and we want to hear from you.

• You do not have to tell us your name or how to contact you. You can share an idea or answer a survey without them.
• If you are under 13 and want to share an idea or ask us a question, ask a parent or carer to send it for you, with their email address. We will write to them about it, not to you.
• If you tell one of our surveys that you are under 16, it does not then ask your name, how to contact you, or whether we can stay in touch with you. It does not ask the more private questions about you either, such as about your health, your ethnic group or your religion.
• We never publish your name or how to contact you. If we quote what you told us in a report, we do not say who you are.
• You have the same rights over your information as an adult (see Your rights). A parent, carer or someone else you trust can help you use them.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of the information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. You can also object to our using it, or ask us to restrict what we do with it while we look into a concern. Where we rely on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time. To do any of these, use the contact details below. If you did not give your name or contact details when you answered a survey, we will not usually be able to tell which response is yours.

If you are unhappy with how we have used your information, please tell us first so that we can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.

Counting visits

We count how many times each page of this website is visited each day, and about how many different people visited it, so that we can see what people read and what they do not. We do this without cookies.

For each visit we make a code from your network address (IP address), the name of your browser and the page, using a key that changes every day and is never kept. The code is held in the website’s memory until the end of that day, so that you are counted once on that page that day, and is then gone. We do not keep your network address, and we cannot recognise you from one day to the next or follow you from one page to another. All we keep is how many visits and how many different visitors each page had each day.

Our lawful basis for this is that it is part of our public task: running the website well.

Videos

Some pages have a video that is kept on YouTube or on Vimeo. Until you press its play button, you see a picture from this website, and nothing is loaded from YouTube or Vimeo: they are not told you are here, and they set no cookies.

When you press play, the video plays in YouTube’s or Vimeo’s own player, in the way that keeps the least about who is watching: YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode, or Vimeo’s player asked not to track you. From then on, YouTube or Vimeo can see your network address and may set cookies or store information on your device, and their own privacy policies apply: Google’s privacy policy, for YouTube, and Vimeo’s privacy policy. Where a video has a transcript, it is under the video, and you can read it instead.

Cookies

Cookies are small files saved on your phone, tablet or computer when you visit a website. This website sets cookies only when you open a form or answer a survey.

These cookies are strictly necessary for the forms and surveys to work, so we do not need to ask for your consent and there is no cookie banner. If you block them in your browser, the rest of the website will still work but the forms and surveys will not. You can send us your idea, or take part in a survey, by email, post or phone instead.

This website does not use analytics, advertising or tracking cookies, and no other organisation sets cookies through it, unless you press play on a video (see Videos).

Contact

To ask about your information, contact Tiverton Town Council: