Dorset Council privacy notice

Dorset Council understands how important your privacy is and values the trust you place in us to use your personal data carefully and sensibly.  This notice explains what types of personal data we collect, how we use and keep your data safe and the rights you have as an individual over what happens to your data.

About Dorset Council

Dorset Council, created 1 April 2019, is a unitary authority providing all local government functions across the areas of:

• East Dorset
• North Dorset
• Purbeck
• West Dorset
• Weymouth and Portland

You can write to us at our main address at  County Hall, Colliton Park, Dorchester, Dorset DT1 1XJ. You may also contact our Data Protection Officer.

We have customer access points at the following locations:

• Weymouth Library
• Dorchester Library
• Wimborne Library
• Wareham Library
• Nordon Lodge, Blandford

Contact details can be found at Contact us

What we do with personal data

Our reasons for collecting and using your personal data, and our lawful basis we rely on to do so, change depending on which service area you are accessing. 

Detection and prevention of fraud

The personal information we have collected from you may be shared with fraud prevention agencies (such as CIFAS) who will use it to prevent fraud and money-laundering and to verify your identity. If fraud is detected, you could be refused certain services, finance, or employment. In appropriate cases, the council and fraud prevention agencies may also share personal information with law enforcement agencies to detect, investigate and prevent crime. 

See more information about how your information will be used by us and these fraud prevention agencies, and your data protection rights.

Your rights

Under the General Data Protection Regulation you have a number of important rights that may be exercised free of charge. In summary, those include rights to:

• fair processing of information and transparency over how we use your use personal information
• access to your personal information and to certain other supplementary information that this privacy notice is already designed to address
• require us to correct any mistakes in your information which we hold
• require the erasure of personal information concerning you in certain situations
• receive the personal information concerning you which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit those data to a third party in certain situations
• object at any time to processing of personal information concerning you for direct marketing
• object in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal information
• otherwise restrict our processing of your personal information in certain circumstances

The Information Commissioner's Office website has further information on each of those rights.

If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please see our Data Protection information or you can contact our Data Protection Officer.

Changes to this privacy notice

This privacy notice was published on 1 April 2019.  Before this date, many of the services outlined in this notice were formerly provided by at least one of the (now abolished) local authorities succeeded by Dorset Council on 1 April 2019.  These local authorities were: East Dorset District Council, North Dorset District Council, Purbeck District Council, West Dorset District Council, Weymouth and Portland Borough Council and Dorset County Council.

How to complain

We hope that our Data Protection Officer can resolve any query or concern you raise about our use of your information.

The General Data Protection Regulation also gives you right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner.