The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s and Westminster City Council Children’s Services collect and use personal information about you and your family. The Council is registered as a Data Controller under the Data Protection Act 2018.
This Privacy Notice broadly explains what information we collect, the purpose for using, the types of personal information and who we may share it with.
It applies to all personal information collected for or on behalf of the Council whether by letter, email, face-to-face, telephone, online or any other method.
To understand how your own personal information is used you may need to refer to any personal communications you have received from the Council or check any specific Children’s Services privacy notices. Alternatively contact the department directly to ask about your personal circumstances.
We collect information in a number of ways, for example, by letter, email, face-to-face, telephone, online forms, surveys.
We use information about children and young people to enable us to carry out specific functions for which we are responsible. There are a variety of reasons why we work with families and ways that we collect data to support you and your family. Some of the purposes for collecting your data are listed below in specific Fair Processing Notices.
The basis on which we lawfully process personal information is found in the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA’18). The following are examples of special categories of personal information, some of which we may collect and use as part of working with children and their families:
This information is only used for the intended purpose but if we intend to use it for any other purpose; we will normally ask you first. In some cases, the Council may use your information for another purpose if it has a legal duty to do so, to provide a complete service to you, to prevent and detect crimes (e.g. fraud), or if there is a risk of serious harm or threat to life.
Statutory provisions could include:
This provision allows the police, local authorities, health authorities and probation trusts to share information about any person for the purposes of preventing crime and disorder.
The collection of Child in Need, child protection, early help and youth offending data is covered by Section 17 of the Children Act 1989. Local authorities may collect and share this information under these implied powers in order to support and/or protect children. Some of this data is likely to meet the definition of Special Categories of Personal Data (under the terms of the DPA’18).
The collection of school census information.
The sharing of information with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in relation to worklessness and other benefits claimed by families is covered generally by Section 131 of the Welfare Reform Act 2012. The Secretary of State, or a person providing the services of the Secretary of State, may supply relevant information to a qualifying person for prescribed purposes relating to welfare services or council tax.
The Welfare Reform Act 2012 section 134 allows for longer term data sharing powers between DWP, their service providers and local authorities. Furthermore, Ministers of the Crown have ordinary common law power to do whatever a natural person may do.
The Digital Economy Act enables public authorities to share relevant information on the individuals and families they are working in compliance with the Data Protection Act 1998 for the primary purpose to support the wellbeing of individuals and households.
The following conditions which are set out in the Act must be met:
The following conditions need to be applied:
The information you provide helps us to support your family and make sure that we meet our legal duties and responsibilities, for example to carry out an educational or social care assessment.
We then use this data to:
The categories of personal information that we collect and use may include the following:
We will sometimes need to share information with Council departments and services as well as other organisations such as our partners, third party contractors, government bodies, the police, health and social care organisations, housing associations, landlords and educational establishments.
We will only share information with these organisations where it is appropriate and legal to do so. We may also share information, for example, if there is a risk of serious harm or threat to life, for the prevention and detection of fraud or crime, assessment of any tax or duty or if we are required to do so by any court or law. Where this is necessary, we are required to comply with all aspects of the DPA’18.
It may sometimes be necessary to transfer personal information overseas. When this is needed, information may be transferred to countries or territories around the world. Any transfers made will be in full compliance with all aspects of the DPA’18.
We will only keep your information for as long as is required by law and in accordance with the council’s corporate retention schedule.
We may also anonymise some personal data you provide to us to ensure that you cannot be identified and use this data to allow the Council to effectively target and plan the provision of services. We may also use this type of data for research purposes although no personal data will be shared.
You have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you.
The DPA’18 also gives you additional rights about the information we hold about you and how we use it, including the right to:
If you want to see information stored about you, you will need to submit a ‘Subject Access Request’.
Please send an email to this address for further details:
RBKC: dataprotectionact@rbkc.gov.uk
WCC: dataprotection@westminster.gov.uk
Our policy is to respect and protect the privacy of anyone who visits our websites. Where we ask you for personal information via an online form, this information will only be used for the purpose indicated and will be held in a secure manner. It will not be used for any other purpose without your permission and will not be kept for longer than necessary. If you are concerned about providing your personal information online, please contact us and we will arrange alternative means for you to provide this information.
Cookies enhance your experience using our websites. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.
We use cookies to audit the use of our website and help us to customise it for your visit. We do not store or transmit any personally identifiable data on these cookies. You can change your cookie setting at any time in the security settings in the browser you use to access the internet. Please note however, that rejecting all cookies may impact your enjoyment or use of this website.
We collect IP addresses* only for the purposes of system administration and to audit the use of our site. We do not link IP addresses to anything personally identifiable, which means that while your user session will be logged you will remain anonymous to us.
Some of our websites are hosted on a digital platform maintained by a company called Open Objects. Open Object sites also use cookies which are collected when anybody visits their websites. When the user’s session has ended no data is stored. The data collected when the website is used is to assist with the user’s experience while navigating the site. No data collected is shared with third parties
* An IP address is a unique string of numbers that identifies each computer
You must notify us immediately if there are any changes in your circumstances and personal details so we can maintain an accurate and up to date record of your information.
You have a right to complain to us if you think we have not complied with our obligation for handling your personal information; please send an email to this address if you wish to send a complaint:
For RBKC: dataprotection@rbkc.gov.uk
For WCC: dataprotection@westminter.gov.uk
If you are not satisfied with the council’s response you have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
As the council creates new services, this may generate further need to amend the privacy notice. If our privacy notice changes at any time in the future, it will be posted on this page.
The Supporting Families programme is the council’s response to the government’s national Troubled Families programme. The programme aims to improve the lives of families who have multiple, complex needs by providing help and support.
By working closely with partner organisations and sharing information with them we can identify families who are experiencing difficulties to ensure they receive co-ordinated help and support.
To be eligible for the programme a family must be experiencing at least two of the following:
This information is only used for the intended purpose of identifying families who are experiencing difficulties to ensure they receive co-ordinated help and support. Where a family meets Supporting Families criteria but are not receiving coordinated support, we will share contact details of the family with the Westminster City Council’s Family Hub programme. This will mean that a worker from a relevant agency can make contact with the family and, with consent, make sure that the services based in the hub work with the family so that, where possible, any problems identified are addressed.
However, if we intend to use information for any other purpose; we will normally ask you first. In some cases, the Council may use your information for another purpose if it has a legal duty to do so, such as to provide further services to you, or if there is a risk of serious harm or threat to life.
For the Supporting Families programme we collect data from internal departments and partner organisations to identify families who are experiencing serious difficulties and ensure they receive co-ordinated help and support. These organisations are:
In order to identify families who may need help and the kind of support they may require, the council will share information with partner organisations as follows:
Full addresses and unique property reference numbers will be shared for individuals who meet any of the eligibility criteria listed above. The purpose of this information sharing is to enable the local authority to confirm which families include adults who are receiving out of work benefits and so may benefit from support relating to finding employment.
As part of the programme, the local authority is required to share some information with the Government’s nominated evaluation partner, the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This includes personal information on individuals and families (such as names and dates of birth) who have been assessed as meeting criteria for the programme and those who have not been included on the programme but may have received other services.
The ONS will link this with information routinely collected by Government departments to develop a wider picture of the needs of families and the progress they have made. The results will be shared with the Government and Local Authorities but in an ‘anonymised’ form to protect families’ privacy. Anonymised data is data that cannot be used to identify an individual.
Prior to this sharing of information with the Government a Data Agreement has been put in place to ensure that all information is transferred, handled and stored in accordance with the Data Protection Act, security measures are in place to prevent the unauthorised use of information and ensure individuals cannot be identified from the information sets directly or any published reports.
Personal data restricted to name, date of birth and postcode will be shared. The purpose of this information sharing is to identify which individuals (who may benefit from a wider service from the local authority) may need help to avoid future involvement in crime or anti-social behaviour.
All information will be used in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018, as informed by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) legislation, Crime and Disorder Act 1998, Children Act 1989 and 2004, Welfare Reform Act 2012, Localism Act 2011, Local Government Act 1972 and other relevant legislation.
Information will be held securely and will only be used and shared on a strict need to know basis with authorised partners in Westminster for the purpose of identifying, supporting and evaluating the work with families who have the most need.
The Government wishes to understand whether the programme has been effective in helping families turn their lives around, whether it is a good use of public money and the degree to which services improve over time. All information gathered for the purposes of the programme will be retained for up to one year after the end of the programme to allow for evaluation. It will therefore be deleted when no longer needed under strict information security arrangements
You have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you.
The new General Data Protection Regulation also gives you additional rights about the information we hold about you and how we use it.
If you have any questions about this privacy statement or data protection issues generally, you can contact dataprotection@westminster.gov.uk.
If you would like to know more about Supporting Families please contact supportingfamilies@westminster.gov.uk or write to us at:
Supporting Families, Children’s Services, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Kensington Town Hall, Horton Street, London W8 7NX
You have a right to complain to us if you think we may not have complied with our obligations as to how personal information should be handled; please see our Fair Processing Notice or our complaints section.
If you think we may not have complied with our obligations regarding the handling of your personal information and should you remain dissatisfied with the council’s response, you have a right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office Report a concern by visiting ICO.
You must notify us immediately if there are any changes in your circumstances and personal details in order for us to maintain an accurate and up to date record of your information.
The Borough of Westminster City Council has a responsibility to encourage, enable and assist young people that are residents in the borough, aged 16 and 17 years at the start of each academic year (and up to 25 years in respect of young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities), to participate in education, employment or training and to mitigate against the risk of becoming Not In Education, Employment or Training (NEET).
In line with this responsibility, the Councils must ensure arrangements are in place to accurately track whether young people are participating in education, employment or training, and submit statutory returns to the Department for Education (DfE) on the number of young people who are NEET or whose current activity is not known.
The identification of young people who are NEET through this tracking makes it possible for the Councils to offer support and encouragement to young people to re-engage with education, employment or training opportunities, either directly or through commissioned or partner organisations.
The information that is collected includes the following:
If a young person is not participating in education, employment or training, additional information may be collected as follows to allow the Council to offer appropriate support:
This information is only used for the purposes of tracking young people’s participation in education, employment or training and for the purposes of supporting young people to re-engage with these opportunities if they have become NEET. However, if we intend to use your information for any other purposes we will normally ask you first. In some cases, the council may use your information for another purpose if it has a legal duty to do so, such as to provide further services to you, or if there is a risk of serious harm or threat to life.
Prospects Services have been commissioned by the Councils to collect this information on their behalf. The majority of the information is collected directly from schools and colleges.
Prospects Services also collect information directly from young people and/or their parent/Carer in a number of ways, for example, by letter, email, face-to-face, telephone, online forms, surveys.
The Councils have a statutory duty to report to the DfE the total number of young people who are participating in education, employment or training, the number of young people who are Not in employment, Education or Training and the number of young people whose current activity is not known.
Information will sometimes be shared with Council departments and services. For example, this could be to identify whether a young person is known to Council services in order to establish whether they are participating in education, employment or training, where the current activity of the young person is not known.
Where a young person is identified as NEET, Prospects will gain their verbal consent to make a referral to support or advice services. Residents of the City of Westminster will be referred to the Westminster Employment Service, an in-house Council service.
We will only share information with these organisations where it is appropriate and legal to do so. We may also share information, for example, if there is a risk of serious harm or threat to life, for the prevention and detection of fraud or crime, assessment of any tax or duty or if we are required to do so by any court or law.
All information will be used in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018, as informed by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) legislation, Crime and Disorder Act 1998, Children Act 1989 and 2004, Welfare Reform Act 2012, Localism Act 2011, Local Government Act 1972 and other relevant legislation.
How long do we keep your information?
Records are archived and stored on the Bi-Borough’s integrated young person’s support system until the young person reaches the age of 25. Access arrangements for suppliers commissioned to act on behalf of the Councils will end once the contract expires, at which point the supplier will no longer have access to the data that is held.
You have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you. The new Data Protection Act 2018 also gives you additional rights that refer to how the council holds and uses your information. Consequently, under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:
Information about how to submit a Subject Access Request can be found here.
Please visit our web pages for further details on how the council complies with the new Data Protection Act 2018.
Please contact us if you would like to know more about the information we hold about you and how we use it. https://www.westminster.gov.uk/data-protection.
You have a right to complain to us if you think we have not compiled with our obligation for handling your personal information; please visit our website https://www.westminster.gov.uk/complaints.
If you are not satisfied with the Council’s response you have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). You can report a concern by visiting the ICO website
You must notify us immediately if there are any changes in your circumstances and personal details so we can maintain an accurate and up to date record of your information.
The council is developing three new Family Hubs, endorsed by the Health and Wellbeing Board in September 2016, that will improve access to preventative services (both universal and targeted) for children and their parents or carers. The services provided from these hubs will support families to understand and make effective changes that ultimately improve their health and wellbeing. The Bessborough Family Hub launched as a pilot on the 2nd July 2018 and will continue as a pilot until 31st March 2020. The overall objectives will be to
We will use our existing children’s centre hub buildings to strengthen this integration and partnership working across commissioned and directly delivered services by:
This will provide the opportunity to bring families into a physical building, a focal point in the community where they can access advice, information, signposting to the right service and direct family support. The centre will also provide a space to co-ordinate a range of services which will be delivered at venues across the locality.
The aim will be, through the network, to identify families with multiple needs as early as possible, no matter what service they first come into contact with.
If you and your family could benefit from early help support the Family Hub will gather information about your family to ensure you and your family receive the right support at the right time.
If you require further information or advice from the Family Hub you can complete the form ‘What Can We Help You With?’ providing your name and contact details which will result in a practitioner from the Family Hub contacting you. Parents can get a copy of the form from the Family Hub by either visiting the Hub or contacting the Family Hub on 02076415676 or from any of the partner organisations working as part of the Integrated Leadership Team (as mentioned below).
If after talking to you we feel you would benefit from further early help support and you agree you will be asked to complete a more detailed form sharing your family’s personal details; which would include full names of everyone in your household, dates of birth, gender, full address and contact details (telephone and email), your ethnicity, housing and employment status, disability and additional health needs, whether you are in receipt of benefits, contact details of GP Health Visitor and any other service supporting your family, relationship status, languages spoken. This form will also ask you to describe your family’s needs and the help you would benefit from. If you would like help with completing this form please contact the Family Hub and a Family Navigator will arrange an appointment to support you with this.
If you do not wish to complete this form or do not wish your information to be shared with any other service then you can still receive a service without doing so but you may have to repeat your information if you require support in the future.
We will not collect any additional information about you without your consent. If we intend to use information for any other purpose; we will normally ask you first. In some cases, the Council may use your information for another purpose if it has a legal duty to do so, such as to provide further services to you, or if there is a risk of serious harm or threat to life.
We may also anonymise some personal data you provide to us to ensure that you cannot be identified and use this data to allow the Council to effectively target and plan the provision of services.
For example, we may use statistics/numbers relating to ethnicity of families to measure reach of services to ensure we are reaching the whole community.
We collect your information with your consent when you request support from the Family Hub, via paper forms (these will be available for completion online in the future):
We may also gather information about your family through telephone contact with you or by face to face in a meeting with you or if another service is contacting the Family Hub on your behalf then they may share your details by secure email.
When your family receive support from one of the Family Hub services we will produce with you a Family Plan, this plan will detail the support that you need and who will help you with your needs. This plan is your family plan to keep but will be shared with your consent with all of the services that are supporting you and your family and stored securely as part of your records.
If you already receive support from a service and it is felt you would benefit from receiving support from further services your support worker may talk to you about the Early Help panel which takes place at the Family Hub. With your consent your information could be shared with a number of services attending the Early Help panel in order to get the best possible support for you and your family.
The Family Hub also receives information from other services, these are
Your information will be held on our secure database system and with your consent will be shared with the services that make up the Integrated Leadership team at the Family Hub, these are
Any details recorded on our database will only be accessed by those working as part of the Family Hub for the purposes of supporting your family.
We will only keep your information for as long as is required by law and to provide you with the necessary services in line with our stated retention policy. In general information related to the Family Hub providing a service to the family, recorded data (family’s personal details and contact information) will be retained for the life of the pilot and up until December 2021, or up to three years from point of the last contact with the family.
Each participating organisation the working as part of the Family Hub have their own data retention policy and will ensure information is held in line with their own retention policies and legal requirements.
You have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you.
The new Data Protection Act 2018 also gives you additional rights that refer to how the council holds and uses your information.
Consequently, under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:
Please visit our web pages for further details on how the Council complies with the Data Protection Act 2018 including information on how to submit a Subject Access Request.
Please contact us if you would like to know more about the information we hold about you and how we use it by contacting the Bessborough Family Hub manager on 02076415676.
If you have any questions regarding your Data Protection rights, such as accessing your personal information, etc. or if you have a concern over the handling of your information. You can email the Council’s Information Management Team: dataprotection@rbkc.gov.uk
You have a right to complain to us if you think we have not complied with our obligation for handling your personal information; please visit www.westminster.gov.uk
If you are not satisfied with the Council’s response you have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). You can report a concern by visiting the ICO website.
You must notify us immediately if there are any changes in your circumstances and personal details so we can maintain an accurate and up to date record of your information.