Privacy notices

This privacy notice applies to anyone who is using Lichfield District Council's WhatsApp service.

Background

Lichfield District Council uses WhatsApp secure business messaging to allow customers to contact the council's customer services team for non urgent enquiries.

The personal data we collect from you to facilitate this will vary and will always include the customer's name. Depending on the nature of the customer's query, it may also include contact details and council tax reference numbers.

We will never ask for bank account details across WhatsApp. 

Please do not reveal special category data over WhatsApp and call us on 01543 308000 if you need to discuss the following:

• personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin
• personal data revealing political opinions
• personal data revealing religious or philosophical beliefs
• personal data revealing trade union membership
• genetic data
• biometric data (where used for identification purposes)
• data concerning health
• data concerning a person’s sex life
• data concerning a person’s sexual orientation

Why we need your data

We require your data in order to enable our customer services advisors to locate your details and provide a service to you. 

What we do with your data

We store WhatsApps for three months within our secure telephony system, after which they are automatically deleted from the system. We will not:

• sell or rent your data to third parties.
• share your data with third parties for marketing purposes. 

Whilst we delete WhatsApps after three months, we may store data gathered from the conversations into back office systems for longer - for example if you speak to us about council tax, details from the conversation may be added to your council tax account, similarly for benefits, housing, planning, environmental health, waste, elections, licensing, and other services (please see our service specific privacy notices).

WhatsApp considers chats with businesses that use the WhatsApp business messaging service to be end-to-end encrypted. WhatsApp state that once the message is received, it is subject to the business’s own privacy practices. Find out about WhatsApp secure business messaging. 

We will only share your data if we are required to do so by law. 

How we protect your data and keep it secure

We are committed to doing all that we can to keep your data secure. We set up systems and processes to prevent unauthorised access to or disclosure of the data we collect about you. 

Your rights

You have the right to request: 

• information about how your personal data is processed 
• that anything inaccurate in your personal data is corrected immediately 
• request a copy of your live chat or historic chat*
• raise an objection about how your personal data is processed 
• request that your personal data is erased, if there is no longer a justification for it 
• ask that we only process your data in certain circumstances 

If you have any of these requests, get in contact with our Data Protection Officer - you can find their contact details below.

If you gave your consent for us to collect and process your data, you have the right to:

• withdraw your consent - this can be done at any time
• request a copy of your personal data - this copy will be provided in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format

The data controller is Lichfield District Council – a data controller determines how and why personal data can be processed. Read the Lichfield District Council’s entry in the Data Protection Public Register for more information.

*If you have a complaint or query in relation to a Whatsapp message or historic WhatsApp message you can request we review the transcript. In order to locate the transcript, we will require the date and time of the contact. Without the date or time, it may not be possible for us to locate the transcript. 

Changes to this notice

Contact the Data Protection Officer if you either:

• have any questions about anything in this document
• think that your personal data has been misused or mishandled
• want to make a subject access request (SARS)

Email: dpo@lichfielddc.gov.uk

You can also complain to the Information Commissioner, who is an independent regulator.

Email: casework@ico.org.uk

Contact form  

Telephone: 0303 123 1113
Textphone: 01625 545860