Public Health privacy notice

How Public Health uses and shares your data.

This departmental privacy notice should be read in conjunction with the Council's corporate privacy notice.

Using your data

Reasons for using your data:

  • Health Needs Assessments e.g. Joint Strategic Needs Assessment, Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment
  • Protecting or improving public health
  • Measuring the health, mortality or care needs of the population e.g. health and wellbeing surveys
  • Public Health planning, monitoring and evaluation
  • Commissioning and delivery of services to promote health and prevent ill health e.g. sexual health services, diet and weight management, sports services stop smoking services, oral health advice, NHS health checks
  • Health Equity Analysis (looking at differences in the quality of health
  • and healthcare across different groups of people)
  • Identifying inequalities in the way people access services
  • Equality monitoring

Why we are allowed to use your data

Legal obligation or public task under various UK laws including but not limited to:

  • The Health & Social Care Act 2012 (plus consent under common law duty of confidence)
  • The Statistics and Registration Service Act (2007) as amended by
  • Section 287 of the Health and Social Care Act (2012)
  • Regulation 3 of the Health Service (Control of Patient
  • Information) Regulations 2002.)
  • The Equality Act 2010 Contract (active sports, grants) Consent (surveys, consultations diets, stop smoking, sexual health etc.)
  • Freedom of information Act 2000
  • Environmental Regulation 2004
  • Data Protection Act 2018
  • General Data Protection Regulation 2018
  • Additional lawful basis apply to processing special category data such as health data

Obtaining and sharing your data with others

We collect your personal data from you, or from others (e.g. council staff in other departments or external organisations or individuals) who inform us of matters relevant to this service area.

We can share your data with:

  • National Regulators e.g. Information Commissioner’s Office, Ombudsman, Investigatory Powers Commissioner
  • Health partners, NHS Digital, Public Health England, local GPs – data will be pseudonymised or anonymised
  • Local voluntary partners 
  • IT suppliers
  • The police and other crime enforcement agencies
  • Other Council departments including shared services

Using your data to make automated decisions

We do not use your data to make automated decisions.

Data sent to countries outside of the EEA

Generally, the Council will not process your personal data outside of the UK or the EEA. In exceptions where we do, we will ensure equivalent data protection controls are in place.

Further information

To see what data is collected and how to exercise your rights to your data, please read our corporate privacy notice.

Up to Departmental privacy notices

Updated: 21/11/2023