Web Use Policy

This page explains how this website, which is managed by us, uses any data you give to us and the ways in which we protect your privacy.

Your Privacy

West Lancashire Borough Council takes your privacy very seriously. As a local authority, we deliver services to you and, in order to do this in an effective way, we will need to collect and use personal data about you, including via our website.

Being transparent and providing accessible information to you about how we use your personal data is a key element of our approach and we will ensure we do this in our privacy notices.

Detailed privacy notices will be issued each time we gather your data to inform you of how we will handle your data and your rights. These will be provided by the Section which collected your data (such as on a planning application form) and will link to our Corporate Privacy Notice.

Security

Under the General Data Protection Regulation, we have a legal duty to protect any data we collect from you. We therefore keep strict security standards to prevent any unauthorised access to your personal data.

What information do we collect from visitors?

We collect three kinds of data from website visitors: feedback, personal details collected from online forms and site usage information (from session cookies and log files). Specific Privacy Notices can be viewed throughout the Council’s website and within the forms/surveys to explain how and when your data will/may be used.

Feedback: We collect feedback through online forms and surveys, through the comments and feedback section, or through phone calls, emails or letters. In order to answer your question or deal with your complaint we may need to contact external bodies e.g. Lancashire County Council or other government departments. We will not share your personal data with any private company, unless it is contracted to provide the service which you are commenting on.

Personal details: We will collect data from you if you complete any online forms on our website or if you contact us with comments or specific requests.

Site usage: We collect two types of data:
i) Cookies. These are pieces of data created when you visit a website. For more information visit our cookies page.
ii) Log files: We collect web statistics (log files) automatically about your visit to our site. This information is used to help us follow browsing preferences on our site so that we can regularly improve our website. These statistics do not contain personal data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

What happens when I visit a link to another site?

This website contains links to other websites, including those of government departments and of other organisations. This web use policy applies only to our site, so you should always be aware when you are moving to another site and read the privacy statement of any site which collects personal data.

Updates

If this policy changes in any way, we will place an updated version on this page.

Regularly reviewing this page ensures you are always aware of what data we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances we will share it with other parties.