Ask a Kent Librarian privacy notice
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
In the course of answering your enquiries and offering technical support we collect the following personal information when you provide it to us:
- contact details – name, phone number, email address, postal address, library card number
We also obtain personal information from other sources as follows:
- contact details from the library circulation system
How we use your personal information
We use your personal information to:
- contact you with answers to your enquiries
- we may also contact you for feedback on the service you received
How long will your personal information be kept
We will hold your personal information for 6 years.
Reasons we can collect and use your personal information
We rely on public task as the lawful basis on which we collect and use the personal data.
The provision of contact details is required from you to enable us to reply and send information to answer your enquiry; if you do not provide contact details we may not be able to give an answer to your enquiry.
Who we share your personal information with
We routinely share your name, email and library card number with suppliers of our online resources. This data sharing enables Ask a Kent Librarian to investigate and resolve technical issues when necessary.
Read a list of our current online resources.
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 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, at dpo@kent.gov.uk, or write to: Data Protection Officer, Sessions House, Maidstone, Kent ME14 1XQ.
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.