Personal information collected from you in order to register an event is required by law.   The main legislation which governs the collection of registration information is the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, the Marriage Act 1949 and the Civil Partnership Act 2004.

You may be legally obliged by these acts, and other pieces of legislation, to provide certain pieces of information.  If you fail to provide information you are required to give us you may, amongst other things, be liable to a fine, or we may not be able to provide the service you are applying for, such as a marriage or a civil partnership.

Personal information may also be collected from you if you are making an application to this office, for example to book an appointment or ceremony, for a certificate or to correct information contained in a register entry.

The information you provide will be held and processed by registration officers for this registration district. 

The Superintendent Registrar is a data controller for birth, marriage and death registrations and the local authority is a data controller for civil partnership registrations, both can be contacted at registrars@milton-keynes.gov.uk

The Registrar General for England and Wales is a joint data controller for birth, marriage, death and civil partnership registrations and can be contacted at the General Register Office, Trafalgar Road, Southport, PR8 2HH.

A copy of any register entry will be provided by this office in accordance with the law to any applicant, provided they supply enough information to identify the entry concerned and pay the appropriate fee. The copy may only be issued in the form of a paper certified copy certificate. An application for a certificate may also be made to the General Register Office.

Indexes for events registered at this office are publicly available in order to help identify the registration record they might need.   Indexes are available to view by appointment and are in paper and electronic formats (there is a charge for this service). If information contained within local indexes is available online it will be compliant with data protection and Human Rights legislation.

A copy of the information collected by a registration officer will also be sent to the Registrar General for England and Wales so that a central record of all registrations can be maintained. There is a legal basis for this data sharing along with a Data Sharing Agreement.

Registration information held at this office may be shared with other departments and organisations in the course of carrying out our functions, or to enable others to perform theirs.  This includes a weekly report of births to the Local Education Authority; and deaths to the Health Authority, Elections, Council Tax and Safeguarding (under 18 year old deaths). Birth registration details are also shared with Children’s Centres with your consent and death registrations with the Department of Work and Pensions for Tell Us Once.

We will only share information where there is a lawful basis to do so for the following reasons:

1. Statistical or research purposes
2. Administrative purposes by official bodies e.g. ensuring their records are up-to-date in order to provide services to the public
3. Fraud prevention or detection, immigration and passport purposes

Further information on data held by the registration service and a full list of the organisations with whom registration data is shared, the purpose and the lawful basis for sharing the data can be found in the Privacy information notice (accessible version).   

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 that inaccurate data is corrected)
• 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.

However as we are processing your personal data under a legal obligation or as a public task you only have the right to request access to the personal information we hold about you, to be informed about the collection and use of your personal information, for incorrect information to be corrected (where the law permits and fees apply) and to request us to restrict the processing of your personal information. In certain circumstances you have the right to object to the processing of your personal information.  Your information will not be subjected to automated decision-making and is not portable.

Registration information is retained indefinitely as required by law.  Other personal records are deleted in line with our retention schedule.

You have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office about the way we are handling your personal information. Details on how you can do this can be found on the Information Commissioner's Office website. 

Further information about the information we collect as a council, your rights and processing can be found in the Milton Keynes City Council Privacy Notice.  The Council Data Protection Officer can be contacted at Data.protection@milton-keynes.gov.uk

Please email us at registrars@milton-keynes.gov.uk if you have any questions or concerns about the collection, use or disclosure of your personal information.

Milton Keynes registration services – June 2019