City of York Council (CYC) current data protection notification is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – reference Z5809563. We regularly review this privacy notice, and it was last updated in February 2025.
CYC is committed to ensuring that your information is handled in accordance with the principles set out in data protection legislation and guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
This privacy notice tells you what to expect when we process your information.
CYC is the controller for this information unless we specifically state otherwise in this privacy notice.
You can contact the council’s Data Protection Officer at:
West OfficesStation Rise
York
YO1 6GA
Telephone: 01904 554145.
Email: information.governance@york.gov.uk.
This privacy notice should be read in conjunction with other CYC privacy notices that are available in our Privacy Notice and/or policies and procedures.
When appropriate we will provide a ‘just in time’ notice to cover any additional processing activities not mentioned in this privacy notice.
- How we collect your information
- What personal data we process and why
- Automated decision-making
- Collecting information automatically
- Children's information
- Lawful basis for processing your personal data
- How long we keep your personal data
- Data sharing
- Data processors and/or third parties
- Transfers of personal data
- How we protect your information
- Your rights in relation to this processing
How we collect your information
We get information about you from the following sources:
- directly from you
- from departments within the council
- from third parties acting on your behalf such as family member(s), advocates, etc
- from our commissioned partners or contractors who undertake work on our behalf
What personal data we process and why
We will also use your personal information with your consent to:
- contact you during an emergency
- routinely check to ensure we have the correct details
We process the following personal data:
- name
- date of birth
- address
- telephone number
- email address
- any specialist skills such as first aid etc
- photo for identification - we take the photo of community emergency plan teams and only use it to produce and provide emergency identification badges
- comments, feedback and opinions
We may also process certain ‘special category’ data including:
- medical data
- disability data
- safeguarding concerns
The Emergency Planning Unit (EPU) service collects your personal information for:
- Emergency Rest Centres - we collect information about the emergency rest centres in York which may be used during an incident as a place of information, refuge and potentially for people to sleep during an emergency in a specific location in the city
- Community Emergency Plans - across the city we work with communities to develop emergency preparedness, one of the ways of developing community preparedness is by developing community emergency plans on a Word document - these are emergency plans written by communities
The information you provide supports us to fulfil our duties by:
- supporting us in preparing residents for emergencies
- providing a link into communities for the council to inform and have a two-way dialogue during an emergency
- listing potential rest centres which may be used during an emergency
You can withdraw your consent to be a volunteer at any time by contacting emergency.planning@york.gov.uk.
We may use your information to create reports and statistics that are anonymous and cannot be linked back to you, your family, or individuals such as:
- statistical analysis
- statutory returns
- audit framework
- see how the council and its partners are supporting individuals
- help design better services
- inform funding decisions
We will inform you if your call is being recorded and you can find more details about our call recording in our Call Recording Privacy Notice.
Automated decision-making
We do not carry out any automated decision-making in the Emergency Planning Unit.
Collecting information automatically
Please see our Cookies Policy for further information about the information we collect automatically when you use our website.
Children’s information
Where we provide services directly to children or young people, the information in the relevant parts of this notice applies to children and young people, as well as adults.
Lawful basis for processing your personal data
The Emergency Planning Unit support the City of York Council in undertaking statutory duties as a category 1 responder organisation under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 by preparing for, responding to, and recovering from emergencies. This is done by working with council employees, partner emergency responding organisations classified by Civil Contingencies Act 2004, and the residents of York. This means that we collect and use your personal information to comply with our legal obligations and / or to carry out tasks in the public interest
Any personal data and special category data that we process about individuals is done so in accordance with one or more of the following Articles 6 and 9 of the UK GDPR and Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018).
- Article 6(1)
- (a) Consent: the individual has given clear consent for the council to process their personal data for a specific purpose.
- (c) Legal obligation: the processing is necessary for the council to comply with the law (not including contractual obligations).
- (d) Vital interests: the processing is necessary to protect someone’s life.
- (e) Public task: the processing is necessary for the council to perform a task in the public interest or for our official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law.
- Article 9(2)
- (a) Explicit consent
- (c) Vital interests
- (g) Reasons of substantial public interest (with a basis in law)
This is supported by Schedule1, Part 2 (6) of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the following legal framework:
- (16) Support for individuals with a particular disability or medical condition
- (18) Safeguarding of children and individuals at risk
The legislations, policies and guidance that relate to this service includes, but is not limited to:
- The civil contingencies act 2004
Some of the Schedule 1 conditions for processing special category data require an Appropriate Policy Document (APD) to be in place, which sets out and explains the procedures for securing compliance with the principles in Article 5 and policies regarding the retention and erasure of such personal data. This document explains this processing and satisfies the requirements of Schedule 1, Part 4 of the DPA 2018 and supplements this privacy notice.
Our Appropriate Policy Document provides further information about this processing.
How long we keep your personal data
We will only keep your information for as long as it is needed then it will be securely and confidentially deleted or disposed of.
Rest Centre contact details are kept as a permanent resource but are maintained by actively updating details on a review cycle basis or when updated with the latest version when received by a community.
You can find details on how long the council keeps records in our Retention Schedule.
Data sharing
We will only share your information where it is appropriate to, with:
- other CYC services
- other councils, government departments and agencies including Civil Contingencies Act 2004 category 1 and 2 responders such as North Yorkshire Police, North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue, Yorkshire Ambulance Service
- other organisations such as NHS
- third parties including our data processors, partners or contractors who undertake work on our behalf
- internal and external auditors
In some circumstances, such as under a court order or safeguarding, we are legally obliged to share your information.
We will always satisfy ourselves that we have a lawful basis on which to share the information and document our decision-making.
Additionally, we are required under the Public Records Act 1958 (as amended) to transfer records to the City or National Archives (TNA) for permanent preservation. Full consideration will be given to Data Protection and Freedom of Information legislation when making decisions about whether such records should be open to the public.
We will also upload information onto Resilience Direct - a Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) secured website developed by the Cabinet Office for emergency responding organisations classified under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 for the purposes of preparedness, response and recovery of an emergency.
Data processors and/or third parties
When we have third parties providing parts or all of our services for us, we have contracts or agreements in place with them. These include:
- Resilient Direct
- North Yorkshire Police privacy notice
- North Yorkshire Ambulance Service privacy policy
- North Yorkshire Council privacy notices
- Zoom Pro or Business version of Zoom (version 5) to host some public facing meetings, training sessions etc across different services in the council. Where these meetings are recorded, recordings will be kept locally on our server and will not be retained by Zoom. Find Zoom’s privacy statement and Zoom's certifications
- Microsoft Teams, to contact you, to gather information from you, or if we are recording or transcribing our discussion or meeting with you, we will let you know. You can find more details about this in the City of York Council Microsoft Office 365 (MS365) Teams Meeting recording and transcription privacy notice
- Eventbrite for arranging and organising events etc. You can find out how they use information in the Eventbrite Privacy Policy
- WhatsApp to contact you. You can find out how they use information ain the WhatsApp Privacy Policy
Transfers of personal data
We do not routinely transfer personal data, special categories of personal data outside of the UK but when this is necessary, we ensure that we have appropriate safeguards in place and that it is done in accordance with the UK data protection and privacy legislation.
How we protect your information
We're committed to keeping your information safe and secure. There are several ways we do this, such as:
- IT security safeguards such as firewalls, encryption, and anti-virus software
- on-site security safeguards to protect physical files and electronic equipment
- training for all staff and elected councillors
- policies and procedures
Your rights in relation to this processing
To find out about your rights under data protection law, you can go to the Information Commissioner's Office website.
You can also find information about your rights in our Privacy Notice.
If you have any questions about this privacy notice, want to exercise your rights, or if you have a complaint about how your information has been used, please contact us on email: information.governance@york.gov.uk, or on telephone: 01904 554145, or write to:
Data Protection OfficerCity of York Council
West Offices
Station Rise
York YO1 6GA