Your privacy is important to us and we take great care to protect it.

This page explains how this website uses any information you give to us online, and the ways in which we protect your privacy when visiting us online.

The Data Protection Act

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679, we have a legal duty to protect any information we collect from you. We do not pass on your details to any third party unless you give us permission, or if we are legally obliged to do so, or it is for the prevention or detection of crime or fraud.

Information you provide to us

The information we collect via the website may include:

• Any personal details you knowingly provide us with through forms and via email, such as name, address, telephone number etc.
• Your preferences regarding your use of email updates, (if you select to receive email updates on products and offers).
• Your IP Address, this is a string of numbers unique to your computer that is recorded by our web server when you request any page or component on the Website. This information is used to monitor your usage of the Website.
• Data recorded by the Website which allows us to recognise you and your preferred settings, this saves you from re-entering information on return visits to the site. Such data is recorded locally on your computer through the use of cookies. Most browsers can be programmed to reject, or warn you before downloading cookies, information regarding this may be found in your browsers help facility.

What we do with your information

Any personal information we collect from this website will be used in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation, Data Protection Act 1998 and other applicable laws. The details we collect will be used for the following:

• We may use your email address to send you information about products and services. In such a case you will be offered the option to opt in/out of these emails.
• We may need to pass the information we collect to other companies for administrative purposes. We may use third parties to carry out certain activities, such as processing and sorting data, monitoring how customers use the Website and issuing our emails for us. Third parties will not be allowed to use your personal information for their own purposes. When we are sharing information with other organisations we will have an information sharing agreement or contract in place that ensures compliance with data protection legislation.
• We use MailChimp as our marketing automation platform. If you receive a newsletter from us, the information you provide when subscribing will be stored by MailChimp in accordance with their Privacy Policy and Terms. You can change your mind at any time and unsubscribe.

How do we protect your information?

We’ll do what we can to make sure we hold records about you in a secure way, and we’ll only make them available to those who have a right to see them. Examples of our security may include:

• encryption, meaning that information is hidden so that it cannot be read without special knowledge (such as a password).
• controlling access to systems and networks allows us to stop people who are not allowed to view your personal information from getting access to it
• regularly training for our staff allows us to make them aware of how to handle information and how and when to report when something goes wrong
• regular testing of our technology and ways of working including keeping up to date on the latest security updates (commonly called patches).

How long we keep your personal information

Our services will need to retain your information for as long as they are working with you. Our records retention schedule sets out how long each service will retain information when the service ends. Legislation tells us how long we need to keep some information.

Information we monitor about visitors to our website

We use cookies on this website. A cookie is a text file sent to your browser and stored there. This enables the web server to recognise your computer when you revisit our website.

Our site uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our site and also allows us to improve our site. During the course of any visit to our site, the pages you see, along with a short text file called a ‘cookie’, are downloaded to your computer.

Many websites do this, because cookies facilitate useful features such as the ability to identify whether a user has successfully logged into the site or to find out whether the computer (and probably its user) has visited the website before which helps us to keep our website relevant, easy to use and up-to-date.

We use cookies for things like collecting website usage data (via Google Analytics) which help us to improve the website and to display more relevant content to users based on previous sessions spent our website.

Access to your information

You have the right to make a request for personal information about yourself, or another person if they have given their consent. This is called a subject access request. Find out how to make a subject access request through the West of England Combined Authority who is the secretariat lead for the Western Gateway STB.

If you have any concerns or questions about how we look after your information, please contact us at WesternGatewaySTB@westofengland-ca.gov.uk or write to the West of England Combined Authority who is the secretariat lead for the Western Gateway STB at 3 Rivergate, Temple Quay, Bristol, BS1 6ER.

For independent advice about data protection, privacy and data sharing issues, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.

Telephone: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745 if you prefer to use a national rate number. Alternatively, visit ico.org.uk or email casework@ico.org.uk.