Privacy Policy

Introduction

This page explains how Hertfordshire County Council (HCC) and its service providers or partners will use the personal information collected from you and held in connection with your use of our EngagementHQ ‘Let’s talk Transport’ digital engagement platform. It also describes how long that information is kept and the circumstances in which we might disclose it to a third party.

If you respond to a Let’s Talk Transport project on behalf of an organisation, not all of this page applies to you.  Please see the section on ‘responding on behalf of an organisation’ below.

Some of our consultations and surveys are also hosted on other sites and platforms, and links to these may be included in this site. You may also wish to read the general Hertfordshire County Council Privacy Policy.

Why we need your information

The data on this form is being gathered for the purpose of meeting our statutory obligations for transport scheme consultations and for the purpose of improving our understanding of local concerns, suggestions, ideas and support or opposition to different transport measures and changes. Hertfordshire County Council will use this information to:

• analyse and interpret your data and responses to help meet our objectives and obligations;
• communicate information to you about engagement opportunities, events and other initiatives; and
• respond to enquiries and otherwise engage with stakeholders.

This information is being gathered and will be processed on the basis that you are giving consent for us to do so. If you wish to withdraw consent at any time you can do so by contacting the Let’s Talk Transport admin or contacting the Hertfordshire County Council Data Protection Team: 

Data Protection Team
CHO150
Hertfordshire County Council
1st Floor Robertson House
Stevenage
Hertfordshire
SG1 2ST

Tel: 01992 588099
Email: data.protection@hertfordshire.gov.uk

Under data protection legislation, HCC is only allowed to use personal information if we have a ‘legal basis’ to do so.  In the case of public engagement and consultation, we rely on the following ‘legal grounds’: 

Our statutory and public functions: 

• to undertake activities to promote and encourage safe, integrated, efficient and economic transport facilities and services, and to deliver the Local Transport Plan;
• our legal obligation to consult with the public under sections of the Highways Act 1980 and the Environment Act 2021 as well as other relevant legislation

Where you have given your consent to Hertfordshire County Council, for example: 

• where you have opted to receive emails from us notifying you of new engagement activity
• Where we have your consent to collect personal data or ‘special category’ personal data

Sometimes we also need to collect or store information that is defined as ‘special category personal data’. This relates to the equality monitoring questions asked during registration or as part of a public engagement survey if no sign in was required. For example, this could include (but not be limited to) information relating to your health, racial or ethnic origin, sexual orientation and religious beliefs.

The information you have provided to us will be used alongside additional information obtained from Herts Insight or other geodemographic data such as Acorn or Mosaic data.

Information will be processed and held in the EngagementHQ platform by Granicus. The Granicus privacy statement can be accessed here.

Responding on behalf of an organisation

If you respond to a Let’s Talk Transport for Hertfordshire project on behalf of an organisation (e.g. interest groups, businesses, charities, trade bodies, etc) you will be asked to provide the name of the organisation you are representing during the registration process. 

If you respond on behalf of an organisation it should be in an official capacity. The name of the organisation may be published in final project reports and potentially associated with a response, but any personal information provided in relation to the individual respondent will not be publicly available, unless legal obligations apply.

What information we will collect

As we work to plan and manage Hertfordshire’s roads and public transport network, it’s vital that we understand the communities and individuals we’re engaging with. That means keeping a reliable record of the interactions we’ve had with individuals, businesses, elected representatives and stakeholders and other interested groups, and any relevant information which may help us better understand how to deliver projects.

Please note that you are able to browse any publicly accessible sections of this website completely anonymously without signing up.

We hold three types of personal information in relation to users:

1. Registration profile information

In order to respond to some projects on Let’s Talk Transport for Hertfordshire you may need to register with the site. When you register you need to provide a username, password, your email address and set your communication preferences. We also ask a number of additional questions, such as your name and postcode. 

We collect your data to:

• communicate information to you about engagement opportunities, events and other initiatives; 
• respond to enquiries and otherwise engage with stakeholders; and
• analyse and interpret your feedback to help meet our objectives and obligations.

We also ask a series of equality monitoring questions (e.g. age, ethnicity, religion and gender) when you register.  Answering these questions is voluntary. We ask these equality monitoring questions to ensure that:

• our activity reaches all sections of the community (in line with our public sector equality duties) 
• to understand possible differences in views between sections of the community (for example to consider if the level of support for a scheme varies between age groups)
• to improve the effectiveness of the way we communicate with all our customers

2. Engagement and survey Information

The content you create as part of your interactions with the Let’s Talk Transport website can include responses to surveys, comments on discussion forums, or any of the other engagement opportunities available. This is to ensure that we can understand your views on our proposals and any ideas or contributions you would like to make.

Your responses may include additional personal information you have shared with us in response to specific questions asked in relation to a proposal, as well as your views.

This platform will use a variety of up to eight different feedback tools to allow you to provide feedback on projects. Each project will use at least one, but sometimes a variety of these feedback tools. They are a mixture of open, closed and mixed environment tools. Further details are provided in the below table:

The Let’s Talk Transport platform is moderated to ensure participants and others using the platform are safe from malicious, inflammatory, and illegal materials. Moderation takes place in relation to chosen usernames and any public-facing contributions, including the removal of personal information. Moderation could result in changes being made to a username, removal of content, temporary suspension, or permanent blocking. Participants will receive an email notification if any of this action is taken. 

We will not pass your personal information on to any other organisation for marketing purposes. In addition, we do not sell or rent personal information to third parties for any purpose.

Responses to Let’s Talk Transport projects may be made publicly available, but any personal information will be kept confidential.  A summary of who has responded to each project and a summary of views expressed may be published, and full responses may also be published.  Publication may be on our digital engagement platform, elsewhere online, and/or in printed form at the end of the project/or particular stage of the project, for example at the end of any formal consultation process.

Information provided in response to a project may also be subject to publication or disclosure in accordance with requests made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and Environmental Information Regulations 2004.  Any personal information provided in a response will be removed prior to disclosure. 

3. Usage Information

We collect information about your usage of the site to help improve how the website functions and to understand how users interact with it, for example, enabling us to monitor which pages or features are accessed, if they are useful, what tools are used, etc. We do this using cookies. For more details on this and how we use cookies more generally at Hertfordshire County Council see our cookies statement here. 

If you respond to a project via this platform, device information (such as IP address) and log data will be collected. This is used to optimise performance and improve overall user experience.

What we will do with your information

The information you give us will be held by the Growth & Environment department  of Hertfordshire County Council and will only be used for the purposes set out in each consultation and engagement activity.  

We share information only in limited circumstances. We share respondent’s personal information with our subsidiaries and service providers for the purposes of administering projects and analysing the responses. 

We sometimes deliver engagement activities with partner organisations (for example, District and Borough Councils) and data collected through this platform may be shared with these organisations.

Data collected will be analysed by either HCC staff, District/Borough Council staff, or an external analysis agency or consultancy with whom HCC has entered a contract for professional services. 

When data is shared with a partner organisation or external organisation for information or analysis, we will remove names and email addresses, however postcode data and special category data may remain for analysis purposes. This data will have been anonymised so that no individual is identifiable purely from their response.

If a project is subject to a judicial review, we may be obliged to share full responses with the assigned court. 

In some circumstances we may disclose personal information in response to valid requests from the police. Before any such disclosure takes place, the police are required to demonstrate that the personal information concerned will assist them in the prevention or detection of a specific crime, or in the apprehension or prosecution of an offender. Each request from the police is dealt with on a strictly case-by-case basis to ensure that any such disclosure is lawful and in accordance with data protection legislation.

How long we will keep your information

The information that you supply to us will be kept on file for no longer than seven years after the end of a project or scheme being delivered.

What are your rights?

Hertfordshire County Council will be the Data Controller for this information.

You have the following rights in relation to this data:

• You have the right to be informed about what information we hold about you and how we use it.
• You have the right to request copies of any information the Council holds about you by making a subject access request.
• If information we hold about you is factually inaccurate you have the right to have it corrected.
• You have the right to object to the way we are using your data.
• You have the right to request that your data is deleted. However we may be unable to delete your data if there is a need for us to keep it. In this case you will receive an explanation of why we need to keep the data.
• You can also request that we stop using your data while we consider a request to have it corrected or deleted. There may be some circumstances in which we are unable to do this however we will provide an explanation if this is the case.
• In certain circumstances you may also request data we hold about you in a format that allows it to be transferred to another organisation.
• In the event that decisions are taken using automated processes you have the right to request that these decisions are reviewed by a member of staff and to challenge these decisions.

If you would like to request copies of your data, request that your data is deleted or have any other queries in relation to data which the Council holds about you please contact the Data Protection Team:

Data Protection Team
CHO150
Hertfordshire County Council
1st Floor Robertson House
Stevenage
Hertfordshire
SG1 2ST

Tel: 01992 588099
Email: data.protection@hertfordshire.gov.uk

You can also contact our Data Protection Officer at dataprotection.officer@hertfordshire.gov.uk or in writing to the address above.

If you are unhappy with the way that Hertfordshire County Council has used your data or with the way we have responded to a request you also have the right to contact the Information Commissioner’s Office www.ico.org.uk .