Privacy notices

Croydon Council Trading Standards works to protect consumers from illegal trading practices and supports legitimate business within the borough of Croydon. We respond to and investigate complex consumer complaints and conduct inspections of businesses in compliance with legislation. In serious cases, we may apply to the Courts to prosecute offenders and to obtain enforcement orders to stop illegal activities. We also deliver business advice and actively work to stop consumers suffering detriment through a combination of proactive and reactive prevention and enforcement routes.

This Privacy Notice explains how we use your personal information and how we protect your privacy in compliance with our requirements under the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2018. By personal information, we mean information which, by itself or with other data is available to Croydon Council, can be used to identify you. This notice applies to any activity involving our use of your personal data, for example, collecting, storing, sharing and destroying it.

For more general information about how the Council uses your information and your data rights, please refer to the Corporate Privacy Notice at www.croydon.gov.uk/privacy.

What information we collect

We may collect some or all of the following information about you:

• name, date of birth, gender, marital status, children, contact details and preferred contact method
• National Insurance number, passport and other identifiers
• emergency contact details
• financial information
• identification documents to prove your entitlement to work in the UK
• health/medical data including disabilities
• information about criminal convictions and offences
• information about your employment history and current employment
• information from the Electoral Register
• trading details of businesses
• details of complainants, consumers, victims and witnesses
• correspondence, emails, letters and notes of telephone conversations between you and our staff

Personal information is also included within complaints received, intelligence and inspection reports and other relevant documents received or produced by our service regarding consumer-  and business-related matters such as investigations into criminal/civil matters. Personal data may also be recorded as part of any visits, inspections and testing that we carry out to comply with our legal duties.

Why we collect your information

We use your data to:

• comply with all legal and statutory obligations and powers
• enforce fair trading
• combat illegal trading

• monitor product safety
• address under-age sales
• verify weights and measures
• administer and grant relevant licenses and certificates

• prevent crime and fraud and help safeguard at-risk adults and children within the borough
• produce statistics and reports. Statistics are used so that individuals’ personal data cannot be identified from them
• develop policies and strategies
• comply with government department research and statistical returns
• account for our decisions and investigate complaints
• improve our services

We do not make or use any automated (that is, without any human involvement) decision-making including profiling.

We do not send any information we collect about you outside the United Kingdom.

Who we share information with

• other Croydon Council teams who support our service may also have access to your personal information to carry out their statutory roles (e.g. Legal Services, Social Services, Complaints Team, IT, Safety Division, Information Management Team)
• Barristers/Counsel
• Courts services
• Other Trading Standards Services
• Government departments/agencies e.g. Competition and Markets Authority, Food Standards Agency,
• regulators e.g. HM Revenue & Customs, Health and Safety Executive
• law enforcement agencies e.g. National Crime Agency
• Crown Prosecution Service
• National Trading Standards
• Public Health England
• Office for Product Safety & Standards
• other local authorities’ Trading Standards services
• Citizens Advice Bureaux
• HM Courts and Tribunals Service
• Support agencies e.g. Age UK, Victim Support
• Police Forces and Fire and Rescue services
• solicitors and other advocates
• expert witnesses
• Trade Associations
• members of the public under certain Freedom of Information conditions

The lawful basis on which we use this information

• Compliance with our legal obligations
• Tasks carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority
• Consent where this is appropriate in order to signpost you to support services that are available

Storing this information                                   

Personal data will not be retained for longer than necessary in relation to the purposes for which they were collected. There is usually a legal reason for keeping your personal information for a set period of time – this ranges from months for some records to years for more sensitive records.

We securely destroy all information once we have used it and no longer need it.

If you require more information about how long we keep your data, please contact us at trading.standards@croydon.gov.uk

Providing us with accurate information

It is very important that you provide us with accurate information so that the functions of our service can be carried out and complaints / investigations actioned. If any of your details have changed, or change in the future, please inform us as soon as possible so that we can update your records.

If false or inaccurate information is provided and fraud is identified, details will be passed to fraud prevention agencies. Law enforcement agencies may access and use this information.

Requesting access to your personal data

Under GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, you have the right to request access to information that we hold about them. To make a request for your personal information, please contact the Council’s Information Management Team at SAR@croydon.gov.uk.

Further information

The GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 give you a number of rights to control what personal information is used by us and how it is used by us. Information about your individual data rights is listed in the Council’s Corporate Privacy Notice.

If you have any questions or concerns about the way we collect, store or use your personal information, please contact in the first instance trading.standards@croydon.gov.uk.

For independent advice about data protection issues, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at www.ico.org.uk .

We reserve the right to amend this Privacy Notice at any time and will keep it under review. If we do make any changes, we will post the current version to our website at this address.

Last updated: June 2018