Access to personal information

Personal information held by the Council

The Council provides a wide range of services and information is held in order to carry out its functions. The kind of information held varies depending on the services provided. Records (manual or computerised) may contain personal information about you or other people that the Council keeps confidential and secure. Consent to share information will be sought if necessary to provide services. You are entitled to access personal information held by the Council in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998.

The Data Protection Act refers to individuals as 'data subjects'. The Council will process any requests for access to personal information in accordance with the Act. This process is called 'subject access'.

Subject access application process

• Please read the explanatory leaflet (see documents table below)
• An application form should be completed (see documents table below)
• A standard £10 fee for searching for information must be paid
• Please return the completed application form and £10 non-refundable fee to the Corporate Information Manager (see contact address) or use our secure online payment system

Applying on behalf of someone else

If you are a parent you can make a subject access request on behalf of your child as long as it is in the child’s best interests. Consent will be sought from children if they are over 12 years old.

You may appoint a representative to deal with the request on your own behalf.

What happens after you have applied?

The application form is checked and the payment processed. It is helpful to state on the application form whether you are requiring information on a specific issue and the timescale involved if possible. If we need to clarify anything about your request we will contact you. The relevant records that contain your personal details will then be found. You are only entitled to see information relating to yourself and not anybody else, even if a family member. We will review the records to see if any exemptions to providing the information apply.

Timescale

We expect that in most situations this process will not take longer than 40 calendar days from the date we received the payment. In some circumstances where the information is not easily available or is of a substantial amount or we need to consult with third parties then we may need to let you know that providing the information will take longer.

Exemptions

The Council is obliged to consider any exemptions to providing the information under the Act, including:

• the prevention or detection of crime/taxation and apprehension or prosecution of offenders
• where the release of health, education or social work information would cause serious harm
• safeguarding national security

Third party information

Where the record also contains details of other people then we must consider whether it would be a breach of their rights to release the information about them.

Where information has been received from another person or organisation then their consent may need to be obtained before it can be released.

Providing the information

We will let you know when the information is ready and make arrangements for this to be given to you.

Please contact the Corporate Information Manager if you would like further explanation or assistance.

Documents

To view these documents you might need to download some software. Visit our downloads page for more information.

	Seeing records held about you - information for the public. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 640KB
	Subject Access Request form - for requests for access to personal information. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 77.7KB
	Assisting 'data subjects' to access information held about them - guidance for Plymouth City Council Staff. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 65KB
	Subject Access Request process - flowchart for requesting personal information. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 30KB
	Subject Access Request redaction of records - staff guidance on redacting records. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 24.3KB

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