Privacy notices

Croydon Register Office privacy notice

Who we are

We are responsible for registering births, deaths, marriages and civil partnerships within the borough of Croydon.

This privacy notice explains how we use your personal information and how we protect your privacy in accordance with our obligations under the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2018. It applies to any activity involving our use of your personal data, for example, collecting, storing, sharing, and destroying it. This notice also provides you with information that relates specifically to our service and should be read together with the council’s corporate privacy notice.  

What information we collect and why

• to comply with our legal obligations, we are required to collect a range of personal information when dealing with the registration of births, deaths, marriages and civil partnerships.; we also collect information as part of our nationality and passport checking service and Nationality Document Return Service
  • if you fail to provide information that you are required to give us you may be liable to a fine, or we may not be able to provide the service you are applying for, such as a marriage or a civil partnership
• personal information may also be collected if you make an application to this office, for example, for a copy of a certificate or to correct or update information about you contained in a register entry
• information which you are required to give to us, and other information given to us voluntarily, may be passed to the UK Statistics Authority for statistical or research purposes; to other official bodies to ensure their records are up to date, for example Council Tax, and to assist with fraud prevention or detection, immigration and passport purposes
• personal information that you are required by law to provide for a registration will be kept by our superintendent registrar; a copy of the information you supply will also be sent to the General Register Office for England and Wales so that a central record of all registrations is maintained

The powers that allow us to collect, process and retain your personal data come from the following legislation: Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, Marriage Act 1949, Civil Partnership Act 2004. 

Who we share you information with and the lawful basis for sharing

Additional information about personal data we hold:

• a full list of the organisations we share data with, and the purpose and the lawful basis for sharing the data can be viewed at
  Croydon Register Office - data sharing (PDF, 201.02KB)

Storing your information 

Personal data will not be retained for longer than necessary that for the purposes it was collected for. There is usually a legal reason for keeping your personal information for a set period of time. Registration information is retained indefinitely as required by law. We also apply different retention periods for users of our online booking service. 

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

Requesting access to your personal data

Subject Access Request

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

Requesting a copy of register entry

A copy of a register entry may be provided by this office in accordance with the law when an applicant supplies us with enough information to identify the entry concerned and pays the appropriate fee. To make a request, please contact us at register.office@croydon.gov.uk. 

For information on how to correct or update personal information contained in a register entry, please visit www.gov.uk/browse/births-deaths-marriages/register-offices.

Other information provided

The General Register Office for England and Wales makes indexes publicly available to help members of the public identify the registration they might need (www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/). Our Register Office also makes a local index available for inspection at our offices in compliance with data protection and other legislation. Our address is Croydon Register Office, Ground Floor Offices, Croydon Town Hall, Fell Road, Croydon CR0 1NX (Monday to Friday, 9.30am to 4pm, but closed on the first Wednesday morning of every month for training). 

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 you. To make a request, 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 data rights is listed in the council’s corporate privacy notice at www.croydon.gov.uk/privacy.

If you have any questions or concerns about the way we collect, store or use your personal information, please contact us in the first instance at register.office@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