Member complaints privacy notice

Last updated: March 2026

This notice explains what personal data (information) we hold about you, how we collect, how we use and may share information about you.

We are required to give you this information under data protection law.

Who we are

We provide a range of government services to local people and businesses and needs to collect, use and process personal data to deliver these services.

We collect, use and are responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are regulated under the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (‘UK GDPR’) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

We are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information. Our Data Protection Officer is Benjamin Watts.

The personal information we collect and use

Information collected by us

In the course of handling complaints against elected Members, we collect the following personal information when you provide it to us:

• Name
• Contact information
• Details of the complaint
• Potentially including special category data depending on the nature of the complaint, for example:
  • race
  • ethnic origin
  • politics
  • religion
  • trade union membership
  • genetics
  • biometrics
  • health
  • sex life
  • sexual orientation.

How we use your personal information

We use your personal information to:

• investigate your complaint (this may include requesting comments from third parties)
• keep in contact with you about your complaint and to make appropriate records of the complaint.

Special category data is only used as part of the investigation where it is provided by you because you think it is relevant to the complaint and have made that clear in the details of your complaint.

How long your personal data will be kept

We will hold your personal information for 1 year following the completion of the investigation. After this time, the information is securely destroyed.

Reasons we can collect and use your personal information

The provision of contact details, including name, address or email address is required from you to enable us to respond to your complaint or complaints.

The provision of special category demographic information, as outlined above, is not required from you unless it is relevant to your complaint. If you feel it is relevant and have supplied it as part of your complaint, the processing of this data will be used to investigate and manage your complaint.

We rely on explicit consent as the lawful basis on which we collect and use your special category data for statutory purposes (for example, when investigating your complaint).

We may use your complaint to help train Members on the Code of Conduct. In these cases, we will remove any information that may identify you and amend various details to ensure you will not be identified beyond the trainers.

Occasionally, processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims or whenever courts are acting in their judicial capacity.

We may process criminal offence data where this is mentioned as part of a complaint. If that is the case, we will rely on the appropriate equivalent conditions in Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018, namely statutory purposes, legal claims and judicial acts.

With whom we share your personal information

We routinely share details of the complaint, which may include personal information, depending on the nature of the complaint, for the purposes of investigation and complaint resolution, with:

• officers managing the complaint process
• the monitoring officer
• the Independent Person
• the Standards Committee (Elected Members).

The Member about whom you have complained will be provided with your name and the details of the complaint as part of the investigation.

For more information, view our county councillor complaints process.

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

For more information about how data is handled in relation to all management of our customer feedback and complaints, read our customer feedback privacy notice.

Your rights

Under the UK GDPR you have rights which you can exercise 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 (subject access request)
• ask us to correct any mistakes in the information we hold about you
• object to direct marketing
• make a complaint to the Information Commissioners Office
• withdraw consent at any time (if applicable)

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. 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, contact the Information Resilience and Transparency Team at data.protection@kent.gov.uk .

Keeping your personal data secure

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal data from being accidentally lost or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal data 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.

Contact

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, through email or post at:

The UK GDPR also gives you right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner who may be contacted on 03031 231113.

Read our corporate privacy statement.