Local Voice is pleased to provide the following Privacy Notice:

The Website

This policy governs the privacy of this website, www.localvoice.org.uk, and those users who choose to engage with it. This website and its owners take a proactive approach to user privacy and ensure the necessary steps are taken to protect their privacy throughout their visiting experience. This website complies with all UK national laws and requirements for user privacy.

Use of Cookies

This website uses cookies to better the user's experience while visiting the website.

Cookies are small files saved to the user's computer hard drive that track, save and store information about the user's interactions and usage of the website. This allows the website, through its server to provide the users with a tailored experience within this website. WordPress.org uses cookies to help Local Voice identify and track visitors and their website access preferences. Local Voice website visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before visiting the website.

Users are advised that if they wish to deny the use and saving of cookies from this website on to their computers hard drive they should take necessary steps within their web browsers security settings to block all cookies from this website and its external serving vendors.

This website uses tracking software to monitor its visitors to better understand how they use it. This software is provided by Google Analytics which uses cookies to track visitor usage. The software will save a cookie to your computers hard drive in order to track and monitor your engagement and usage of the website but will not store, save or collect personal information. You can read Google's privacy policy here for further information.

Other cookies may be stored to your computer's hard drive by external vendors when this website uses referral programs, sponsored links or adverts. Such cookies are used for conversion and referral tracking and typically expire after 30 days, though some may take longer. No personal information is stored, saved or collected.

Contact & Communication

Users contacting this website and/or its owners do so at their own discretion and provide any such personal details requested at their own risk.

Your personal information is kept private and stored securely until the time it is no longer required or has no use, as detailed in the GDPR 2018. Every effort has been made to ensure a safe and secure form to email submission process.

This website and its owners use any information submitted to provide you with further information about the products / services they offer or to assist you in answering any questions or queries you may have submitted. This includes using your details to subscribe you to any email newsletter program the website operates but only if your express permission was granted when submitting any form to email process. Your details are not passed on to any third parties.

In you making initial contact you consent to Local Voice maintaining a dialogue with you until you either opt out (which you can do at any stage) or we decide to desist in promoting our services.

How we collect and use your data

We work with partners and stakeholders including Local Healthwatch, NHS bodies, local authorities and voluntary organisations to increase understanding of the needs of local people and improve public services. Through our main activities, including intelligence gathering, engagement with local people, signposting and advice provision, we collect and process user data, including personal data.

Your personal data includes any information that may identify you, including but not limited to your name, contact details such as email or phone number, as well as your demographic characteristics, personal circumstances and opinions.

Special category data is personal data that requires heightened data protection measures due to its sensitive and personal nature. Article 9 (1) of the UK GDPR defines it as data pertaining to “racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person's sex life or sexual orientation.”

Personal data may be collected about you from the forms and surveys you complete, from records of our correspondence and phone calls and details of your visits to our website, including but not limited to personally identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. Local Voice may from time to time use such information to identify its visitors. Local Voice may also collect statistics about the behaviour of visitors to its website.

Your data will be stored securely in our Community Insights System, hosted in the UK and password-protected. You can request to see your data or to have any part of it removed from the Community Insights System.  Your data may only be shared with relevant stakeholders (such as your local Healthwatch, local authority, NHS trusts and alliances or other organisations) with your consent and for the purposes outlined below. Local Voice has a data processing agreement with Darren Morgan, the creator and administrator of the Community Insights System.

We engage with local people on their experience with health and social care services. We represent the voice of local people in the health and social care debate, and work with relevant stakeholders in health and social care to improve services for people like you and ensure they meet your needs. For this reason, we need to collect, analyse and share your personal data. We will only collect personal data (including your demographic characteristics, experience of services or contact details) in order to serve the purpose of better understanding patient experience and formulating recommendations for service improvement).

Unless stated otherwise, information such as your comments regarding your use of NHS and social care services and opinion of said services (including reviews, answers to surveys or interviews and comments submitted to us by any other means) will be redacted to exclude any reference to the names of any individuals- including but not limited to yourself, any other service users and professionals involved in your care; as well as any details identified as posing a risk of identifying you our any other individual.

We will only collect special category data (such as information your ethnicity, sexual orientation or medical conditions) when necessary as outlined in Article 9 (2) (h) UK GDPR for the purposes of “provision of health or social care … or for the management of health or social care systems on the basis of UK law …”- for instance, in order to understand patient experience and improvement of health and social care services; or to understand inequalities in access to health and social care services, and formulate recommendations to decrease them. 

Your name and contact details (such as email or phone number) will only be collected and shared among partner organisations with your consent and for the following purposes:

• Contacting you about engagement opportunities relevant to you (such as an invite to take part in a questionnaire about the services you use)
• Contacting you about follow-on engagement (such as an invite for an in-depth interview after you filled in a questionnaire).
• Contacting you about the findings and impact of our engagement activities.
• Signposting and/or referral to services relevant to your needs.
  
  

Information about your name and contact details will be stored separately from other personal data, such as your experience with health and social care services or your demographic characteristics.

Local Voice will only collect the information needed so that we can carry out our community intelligence and public engagement work to the full extent of our remit and meet our contractual obligations; we never sell or broker your data, although coincidentally there may be times when your information could be contained in data that Local Voice has purchased from a third-party list broker, on behalf of a client.

We may only disclose your Personal Information to meet legal obligations, regulations or valid governmental request. The organisation may also enforce its Terms and Conditions, including investigating potential violations of its Terms and Conditions to detect, prevent or mitigate fraud or security or technical issues; or to protect against imminent harm to the rights, property or safety of Local Voice, its clients and/or the wider community.

Local Voice also acts on behalf of its clients in the capacity of data processor. When working exclusively as a data processor, Local Voice will be acting on the instruction of its client and will work hard to ensure that the client is fully GDPR compliant.

Local Voice may on occasions pass your Personal Information to third parties exclusively to process work on its behalf. Local Voice requires these parties to agree to process this information based on our instructions and requirements consistent with this Privacy Notice and GDPR.

Retention Policy

Local Voice will process personal data during the duration of any contract and will continue to store only the personal data needed for five years after the contract has expired to meet any legal obligations. After five years any personal data not needed will be deleted.

Data storage

Data is held in the United Kingdom using different (multiple) servers. Local Voice does not store personal data outside the EEA.