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Communications and Digital

What we do

The Communications and Digital Team creates and maintains:

  • content on the Royal Borough of Greenwich public website and staff intranet
  • online forms, mainly on behalf of other council departments
  • newsletters to residents and businesses
Why we need your information and how we use it

The Council collects user data in the following ways via the website:

  • Online forms
  • User accounts
  • Subscribers to our mailing lists

Customers complete online forms to access a variety of Council services. These include applying for a Council Tax discount, reporting a street fault and ordering recycling waste sacks.

You can open an account on our website to make it easier to request some services from the Council and manage your applications. When logged in, online forms allow you to save partially completed forms on the website to be finished later.

You can also sign up to receive the latest news from the Council directly to your mailbox.

My account – self service

We use a range of different systems, requiring a different account username and password to sign in. We make sure these are kept secure in our systems but you are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account and password and for restricting access to your computers and other applicable devices, and you agree to accept responsibility for all activities that occur under your account or password.

What is our power to obtain and use personal data?

We are allowed to process personal and sensitive data for the following reasons:

  • For public tasks or statutory functions
  • For a contract for the supply of requested goods or services
  • With consent, where there is documented evidence of that consent
  • For legitimate Interests
What type of information we collect

The Council’s online forms require various information to be collected on behalf of other Council departments. The information requested changes depending on the form, and is sent directly through to the department providing the service.

As an example, we ask for the Council Tax reference on our Council Tax forms and Driving Licence number on the Blue Badge form.

The level of information required depends on the form, but may include:

  • Name
  • Address
  • Date of birth
  • Gender
  • Marital status
  • Religion
  • Sexual orientation
  • Email address
  • Telephone number
  • Education details
  • Medical details
  • Bank details

The majority of online forms collect information on behalf of other Council departments and do not collect data for marketing or communications purposes.

The Council may use some web statistics to track how often the forms are used, but this is separate from personal data.

The Webteam manage several mailing lists, which are stored in an email marketing software. Mailing lists for the weekly Greenwich Info newsletter, Greenwich One Card offers and Business alerts require details such as:

  • Name
  • Address
  • Email address
  • Telephone number
  • Interests (Greenwich Info newsletter only)
  • Greenwich One Card number (Greenwich One Card offers only)
  • Business type (Business alerts only)

We use browser cookies and similar technologies (“Cookies”) to collect and store certain information when you use, access or interact with the council’s internet page.  We may, for example, collect information about the type of device you use to access digital services, the operating system and version, your IP address, your general geographic location as indicated by your IP address, your browser type, the content you view and features you access on the digital services, the web pages you view immediately before and after you access digital services, whether.  For information about how we use cookies, please see our cookies policy.

Who we may share your information with

Data collected through the website will be shared with internal departments.

How long we keep your information

Data is retained on the Council’s database server for up to three years, but is also sent to the relevant internal department who may need to retain it for longer in accordance with their own retention policy or requirements.

Correspondence logged in association with an editorial job is deleted after three years. Most correspondence is between internal Council employees but occasionally it may include correspondence from a member of the public or a representative from an external organisation.

Data collected for the purposes of registering on the website will be retained for as long as users have an account on the website.

Information submitted when signing up for one of our email lists is retained until the user unsubscribes from the service.  An unsubscribe button is at the bottom of each email the user receives.  Once unsubscribed, the user details are automatically deleted from our email marketing software.

Version date
June 2019