Privacy Statement

This explains how the Herefordshire Council website and sub-sites of the herefordshire.gov.uk domain protects and respects the data we collect from you. The Herefordshire Council website covers web content published at http://www.herefordshire.gov.uk/.

The relevant privacy policy and terms and conditions for the online consultations can be found at http://www.herefordshire.gov.uk/consult/

This policy was amended on 26 May 2011 to allow us to collect visitor information. This will help us develop the site to meet your content and navigation needs as efficiently and effectively as possible.

The sections on this page are:

• Data Protection Act 1998
• What information do we collect?
• How to provide us with feedback
• Site usage information
• What happens when I move to another website?
• Access to your information and how to contact us

1. The Data Protection Act 1998

Under the Data Protection Act, we have a legal duty to protect any information we collect from you. We use leading technologies and encryption software to safeguard your data, and keep strict security standards to prevent any unauthorised access to it. We do not pass on your details to any third party or government department unless you give us permission to do so, or where allowed by law.

You have the right to make a formal request in writing for access to personal information (or "personal data") held about you by our website, to inspect it and to have it corrected if it is wrong. We make a small charge for providing this information (currently £10.00). Please use the contact details on this page to direct your enquiries.

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2. What Information do we collect?

We collect two kinds of information from visitors to our website:

• feedback (through our website feedback form, calls to our Helpdesk and the individual page feedback form).
• site usage information from log files and web analytics applications.

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3. How to provide us with feedback

You can send us your feedback in three ways: by comments and questions to the Herefordshire Council eGateway Editor, sent by e-mail, phone or post; or by using the page and Contact Us forms.

i) Comments and questions

If you send an e-mail or letter to the Herefordshire Council eGateway Editor or call our Helpdesk, asking for information, we may need to contact our other departments or partnership organisations to find that information. If your question is technical, we may need to pass it to our technology supplier. We do not pass on any of your personal information when dealing with your enquiry, unless you have given us permission to do so.

After we have replied to you, our service provider Herefordshire Council ICT Services keeps a record of your messages for two years. These records will be transferred to archive tape for a further five years, and then destroyed. Our own system archives your messages after six months, for reference and audit purposes, and deletes them after two years.

ii) Page feedback forms

The individual page feedback form allows you to provide feedback on the content of a particular page and automatically includes the page identity for you. Your comments about our website pages will be made available to the content owner. They will be able to use your input to improve the quality and accuracy of our information, however, they will not be able to respond to you individually unless you include your email address.

We may need to contact our other departments or partnership organisations to respond to your feedback. If your query is technical, we may need to pass it to our technology supplier. We may also wish to use these comments anonymously for administrative and marketing purposes where appropriate. We do not pass on any of your personal information when dealing with your feedback, unless you have given us permission to do so.

iii) Contact Us form

The Contact Us form allows you to give us general feedback and raise any concerns or queries you may have. Your comments about our website will be made available to Web and Information Management Services, including the Herefordshire Council eGateway Editor. They will be able to use your input to improve the quality and accuracy of our information, however, they will not be able to respond to you individually unless you include your email address.

We may need to contact our other departments or partnership organisations to respond to your feedback. If your query is technical, we may need to pass it to our technology supplier. We may also wish to use these comments anonymously for administrative and marketing purposes where appropriate. We do not pass on any of your personal information when dealing with your feedback, unless you have given us permission to do so.

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4. Site usage information

i) Cookies

Cookies are pieces of data created when you visit a website. Our site, http://www.herefordshire.gov.uk/, uses session and persistent cookies to collect information to help us improve our online services and content. For example, they enables us to see which are the popular links from a web page and what are the most common routes through our site so we can amend and update content as necessary.

What do they contain?

Unique session information, such as the last page visited. This cookie does not contain any personal information about you, and does not hold any information about which sites you visited before our website. Additionally, this cookie does not track visitor behaviour across multiple web sites.

When are they created?

When any browser first goes to the website

When do they expire?

Session Cookies expire when the session ends, for example when you close the browser or logout. Persistent Cookies remain on your computer until the expiry is reached. This may be months or years. You may delete all stored cookies at any time via your web browser.

How are they used?

They enable us to gain a better understanding of what content visitors are interested in and how effective the site is at delivering that content. They enable us to track visitor usage patterns for the website but do not contain personal identifiable information. For example, we could use them to see that 10 pages looked at over 3 days represent usage by 2 different visitors.

Session cookies

Session cookies expire when you close down the browser window or logout from the website. The following services running on our website use session cookies:

• Twitter feeds i.e. News.
• Online forms i.e. Contact Us, Feedback on the Website.
• Capita's Self Service - manage your council tax, benefits and business rates.
• Ofsted secure document area.
• Various session tokens - we use Active Server Pages, the .Net framework and Java technology to power this website. These technologies store session identifiers as part of how they work.

Persistent cookies

Persistent cookies have an expiry date that allows it to remain on your machine even after you have logged out or closed your browser. The following services running on our website use persistent cookies:

• Jobs online - applying for a job vacancy
• Benefits calculator
• Gov Delivery email subscription
• Herefordshire Hub
• Google Analytics
• Socitm Website Take-Up Service user satisfaction survey
• Herefordshire Art Week (h.Art)
• Tribal/Synergy FIS online (also known as Family Services Directory and Childcare Directory).
• Twitter - social networking and microblogging service.
• Change contrast - an accessibility function to change the site's colour scheme.

To delete cookies or reject cookies

We recommend you allow the cookies we set by this website as they help us provide a better service. If you do not want to receive cookies from this website, select cookie settings under the privacy settings in your browser options, then add our domain (www.herefordshire.gov.uk) to the list of websites you do not want to accept cookies from.   
Under settings you can also delete individual cookies or any cookies that your browser has stored.
You can find more information on how to delete and control cookies at http://www.aboutcookies.org/Default.aspx?page=2
If you set your browser to refuse cookies, please be aware that there may be functionality on this website that does not work.

ii) Log files

Log files allow us to record your use of the site. The Herefordshire Council Web team puts together log file information from all our visitors, which we use to make changes to the layout of the site and to the information in it. This is based on the way that you move around our website and the route you used to accessed it.

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What happens when I move to another website?

Our website contains links to other websites, both those of the Herefordshire Partnership organisations and of other organisations. This privacy policy applies only to our website, so you should always be aware when you are moving to another site and read the privacy statement of any site which collects personal information.

We do not pass on any personal information you have given us to any other site.

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Access to your information and how to contact us

If you wish to see our records of any correspondence you have sent to us, or if you have a query or complaint about this privacy policy or about the site, you can contact us by e-mail, phone, post or use the website feedback form:

email: editor@herefordshire.gov.uk
phone: (01432) 383817
post:
Web and Knowledge Manager,
Herefordshire Council,
Franklin House,
4 Commercial Road, 
Hereford,
HR1 2BB

These pages reside on a server run by Herefordshire Council. Any views expressed in these pages are not necessarily those of Herefordshire Council. If you find anything that causes concern please let us know.

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