Everything we do with information about people, such as how we collect it and who we share it with, has to comply with the Data Protection Act and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that came into force in May 2018.

A key part of this is being open about how we use information and what rights you have in respect of information we hold about you.  Just to be clear, the bulk of information held will be about your child or young person but there will also be some information about you as parents and this may also include information about siblings.  The amount of information will be dependent on the reasons for our involvement, for example to enable us to process an application for a school place.

Milton Keynes City Council uses information about children for whom it provides services, to enable it to carry out specific functions for which it is responsible, such as school admissions, home educated children, children who are missing in education, home to school travel, early years provision and free school meals.  We may request information from individuals to ensure that we are able to meet our statutory duties under the Education (Pupil Registration) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2016; Education and Inspections Act 2006; Education Act 1996; Home to school travel and transport statutory guidance 2014; Public Procurement 2015; School Admissions Code 2021; Making prescribed alterations to maintained schools – Statutory guidance for proposers and decision makers, October 2024; Section 2 of the Childcare Act 2016 and sections 6, 7, 7A, 9A, 12 and 13 of the Childcare Act 2007, Children Missing Education 2024, Elective Home Education 2019 and Exclusion from maintained schools, academies and pupil referral units in England 2017.

Milton Keynes City Council will use information about its school population for research and statistical purposes, in order to meet its statutory duty to provide sufficient school places.  The statistics are used in such a way that individual children cannot be identified from them.

If anything in this notice is not clear, or if you have further queries, please get in contact with the Data Protection Officer using the details at the end.

This privacy notice should be read alongside the Milton Keynes Council corporate privacy notice

What information do we hold?

We collect information about people who live in Milton Keynes as well as people outside the area who use services that we provide.  The information we collect may vary according to the services being used.

Most of the information we hold starts as a result of:

• An individual contacting us wanting to use a service.
• Another organisation, such as another local authority or a school contacting us, generally on the individual’s behalf and with their knowledge.

We also hold some information about individuals that other organisations are required to provide to us as the Council in Milton Keynes.  Primarily this involves early years settings and schools in the authority providing us with core information about the children attending their establishments.  Schools and early years settings should provide you with their own privacy notices that will explain what information they collect and who they share it with.

Whenever we use information we always limit this to only details that are needed and we ensure that it is used safely and securely.  We require anyone we share information with, or who uses it on our behalf, to do so too.  All staff receive training on data protection and information security.

Why do we have it and what do we use it for?

We provide a wide range of statutory services. We are under legal obligations to provide many of these services and to deliver these we need to collect and use personal information of those using or affected by these services

We share information that is appropriate with organisations and individuals to meet our legal obligations and to co-ordinate with relevant parties to achieve the best possible outcomes for children and young people.

How long do we keep hold of information for?

We only keep information for as long as is needed. This will be based on either a legal requirement (where a law says we must keep information for a specific amount of time) or accepted business practice.

Who we share information with and why

We share information with a range of different types of people and organisations depending on the service being provided or the statutory requirement that we have to comply with.  The types of recipients include:

• service users (and families where relevant)
• local government organisations
• central government departments
• our contractors: organisations that we commission to provide goods and services
• law enforcement agencies, such as Thames Valley Police
• Bucks Fire and Rescue Services
• health and social care organisations and professionals (NHS bodies such as GPs, Milton Keynes Clinical Commissioning Group, Milton Keynes University Hospital)
• Children's Universal Heath Services for the purpose of enabling contact with parents/carers of children who are not registered to a school (home educated) to provide vaccination and immunisation advice
• education establishments such as schools, colleges and early years settings
• examining bodies
• regulatory bodies, investigators and ombudsman (for example Ofsted, CQC, Local Govt Ombudsman)
• courts, tribunals and prisons
• legal representatives
• fraud prevention agencies
• debt collection agencies
• current, past and prospective employers
• trade unions
• press and the media
• councillors and political parties
• housing associations and landlords
• survey and research organisations

We participate in the Cabinet Office's National Fraud Initiative, a data matching exercise to assist in the prevention and detection of fraud. We are required to provide particular sets of data to the Minister for the Cabinet Office for matching for each exercise.

What rights you have

You have various rights around the data we hold about you. They are the right:

• of access (to receive a copy of your personal data)
• to rectification (to request data is corrected inaccurate)
• to erasure (to request that data is deleted)
• to restrict processing (to request we don’t use your data in a certain way)
• to data portability (in some cases, you can ask to receive a copy of your data in a commonly-used electronic format so that it can be given to someone else)
• to object (generally to make a complaint about any aspect of our use of your data)
• to have explained if there will be any automated decision-making, including profiling, based on your data and for the logic behind this to be explained to you.

Any such request can be submitted to the Data Protection Officer. Whether we can agree to your request will depend on the specific circumstances and if we cannot then we will explain the reasons why.

If we are processing your information based on you giving us consent to do so, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. Doing so may mean we are unable to provide the service you are hoping to receive and the implications of you giving or withdrawing your consent will be explained at the time.

If you are unhappy with any aspect of how your information has been collected and/or used, you can make a complaint to the Data Protection Officer. You can also report concerns to the national regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office. Their details can be found on their website:

https://ico.org.uk/concerns/handling/