Everything we do with information about people, such as how we collect it and who we share it with, has to comply with Data Protection. 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.

The Economy & Culture Team for Milton Keynes Council (including Invest Milton Keynes) is committed to preserving your privacy. 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.

How we may collect information

This privacy notice explains why we obtain, store and process data that can identify you and describes our practices in connection with information that we collect.

We obtain information about you when you use our website or services we offer, including but not limited to;

• when you contact us about a service or have an enquiry,
• if you register to receive one of our newsletters,
• when we engage with you through any of our social media platforms,
• when you meet you in person or
• corresponding with us by phone, e-mail or otherwise.

What information we may collect

We may collect the following information:

• name and job title
• contact information including email address and telephone number (including mobile number).
• address details
• information that you have provided at a meeting between us and you.
• other information which will help us serve and engage with the business and cultural community.

Why do we gather this information?

We believe that all the information we gather about you is for a legitimate reason. It helps us to serve and engage with you to support you in the business and cultural community and it also helps us to engage with you regarding opportunities that may be of benefit to you.

We gather information to allow us to help inform Council policy.

What we do with the information we collect

We may use the information held about you in the following ways:

• to communicate with you about our services
• for the provision of services that we provide
• for in-house research and statistical analysis
• to notify you about changes to our services
• to help inform council policy

Providing always that you have given to us the necessary consent, to provide you with information through our newsletter or other electronic bulletins we may produce.

Who has access to your information?

We will not sell or rent your information to third parties.

We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Although through the normal course of business it may be necessary or beneficial to you that we introduce you to third parties, we would never give your details to a third party without your prior consent.

In the normal course of business we would share your details without asking for your consent with internal Milton Keynes Council departments if we felt this was either beneficial to you or would improve the delivery of our services.

How long do we keep your information for?

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

How we store your information

We place great importance on the security of all information provided to us.

A lot of the information we hold about you is held on a secure information management system which we subscribe to. Other information is held securely within Milton Keynes Council on our own servers which are also compliant with IT security requirements.

All of your information is stored on servers that are held in the UK.

Cookies

This website uses cookies. A cookie is a small text file stored in your computer containing text data. We use cookies for certain functions to improve the usability of the website. These cookies do not contain any personal information about you. However, enabling cookies in your web browser is necessary if you wish your selections to be remembered for future visits on the same computer. Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. For more information about cookies and instructions on how to adjust your browser settings to restrict or disable cookies, see the IAB website at www.allaboutcookies.org

Analytics

Our website uses Google Analytics to help analyse how our visitors use the site. The tool uses cookies to store information, such as what time the current visit occurred, whether the visitor has been to the site before, and what site referred the visitor to the web page.

A different cookie is used for each website, and visitors are not tracked across multiple sites. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including IP address) is transmitted to Google. This information may then be used to evaluate visitors’ use of the website and to compile statistical reports on website activity for Milton Keynes Council. To disable this type of cookie, some browsers will indicate when a cookie is being sent and allow you to decline cookies on a case-by-case basis. In addition to declining cookies, you can also install the Google Analytics Opt-out Add-on in your browser, which prevents Google Analytics from collecting information about your website visits.

We will never (and will not allow any third party to) use the statistical analytics tool to track or to collect any Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of visitors to our site. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. Neither we nor Google will link, or seek to link, an IP address with the identity of a computer user. We will not associate any data gathered from this site with any Personally Identifiable Information from any source, unless you explicitly submit that information via a fill-in form on our website.

What rights you have

You have various rights around the data we hold about you.

• right of access (to receive a copy of your personal data)
• right to rectification (to request data is corrected inaccurate)
• right to erasure (to request that data is deleted)
• right to restrict processing (to request we don’t use your data in a certain way)
• right 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)
• right to object (generally to make a complaint about any aspect of our use of your data)
• right 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 Your explicit 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 our 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/

We want you to be comfortable with how, when and why we contact you. It’s simple to choose. How would you like to tell us your preferences?

By Email: Write to us at enquiries@investmiltonkeynes.com

By Phone: Call us on 44 (0) 01908 200 800.

By Post: Write to us at Invest Milton Keynes, Milton Keynes Council, Civic Offices, 1 Saxon Gate East, Milton Keynes, MK9 3EJ.