Livechat Privacy Statement

Who we are

Glasgow City Council is a local authority established under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994 and having its chief office at City Chambers, George Square, Glasgow G2 1DU, United Kingdom. You can contact our data protection officer by post at this address, or by email at: dataprotection@glasgow.gov.uk, or by telephone - 0141 287 1055.

Why do we need your personal information and what do we do with it?

You are giving us your personal information to allow us to deal with your enquiry using our Livechat service.  We also use your information to verify your identity where required and to maintain our records.

Legal basis for using your information

We provide these services to you as part of our statutory function as your local authority. You can find more details of our role on our website. Processing your personal information is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest by the council.

If you do not provide us with the information we have asked for then we will not be able to provide this service to you.

Who do we share your information with?

We are legally obliged to safeguard public funds so we are required to verify and check your details internally for fraud prevention. We may share this information with other public bodies (and also receive information from these other bodies) for fraud checking purposes. 

We are also legally obliged to share certain data with other public bodies, such as HMRC and will do so where the law requires this. We will also generally comply with requests for specific information from other regulatory and law enforcement bodies where this is necessary and appropriate.

Our webchat technology is a product called WhoOn provided by Parker Software.  As our data processor for this service, we will also share your data for the purposes of delivering the livechat service..

We may also share information with external agencies providing services relative to your livechat enquiry. Your information is also analysed internally to help us improve our services. This data sharing is in accordance with our Information Use and Privacy Policy and covered in our full privacy statement on our website. It also forms part of our requirements in line with our Records Management Plan approved in terms of the Public Records (Scotland) Act 2011.

International Transfers

The personal data you provide during a livechat interaction is stored in the UK.  As part of our livechat service, you can also request a transcript of your chat is sent to you via email.  If you elect to receive a transcript by email, this will involve sending data - including your email address and transcript to a web service in the US that will send the email.  When a transcript is sent, a copy of your email address is retained on servers within the US data centre for 3 days before permanently being deleted.  For the avoidance of doubt, your transcript data is not stored on US servers.

How long do we keep your information for?

We only keep your personal information for the minimum period amount of time necessary. Sometimes this time period is set out in the law, but in most cases it is based on the business need. We maintain a records retention and disposal schedule which sets out how long we hold different types of information for.  You can view this on our website (PDF, 4 MB)(opens new window) or you can request a hard copy from the contact address stated above.

Your rights under data protection law

Access to your information
You have the right to request a copy of the personal information about you that we hold. 

Correcting your information
We want to make sure that your personal information is accurate, complete and up to date and you may ask us to correct any personal information about you that you believe does not meet these standards.

Deletion of your information
You have the right to ask us to delete personal information about you where:

1. You consider that we no longer require the information for the purposes for which it was obtained
2. You have validly objected to our use of your personal information - see Objecting to how we may use your information below
3. Our use of your personal information is contrary to law or our other legal obligations.

Objecting to how we may use your information
You have the right at any time to require us to stop using your personal information for direct marketing purposes. 

Restricting how we may use your information
In some cases, you may ask us to restrict how we use your personal information. This right might apply, for example, where we are checking the accuracy of personal information about you that we hold or assessing the validity of any objection you have made to our use of your information. 

The right might also apply if we no longer have a basis for using your personal information but you don't want us to delete the data. Where this right is validly exercised, we may only use the relevant personal information with your consent, for legal claims or where there are other public interest grounds to do so.

Please contact us in any of the ways set out above if you wish to exercise any of these rights.

Complaints

We aim to directly resolve all complaints about how we handle personal information. If your complaint is about how we have handled your personal information, you can contact the Council's Data Protection Officer by email or by telephone on 0141 287 1055.

However, you also have the right to lodge a complaint about data protection matters with the Information Commissioner's Office, who can be contacted by post at: 

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

By phone on 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745. Visit their website (opens new window) for more information.

If your complaint is not about a data protection matter you can find details on how to make a complaint on our website.