Health and Safety Privacy Notice

Health and Safety Privacy Notice

This privacy notice applies to the Health & Safety (H&S) service provided by Worcestershire County Council and should be read in addition to Worcestershire County Council's Full Privacy Notice.

Download a copy of the privacy notice

Health & Safety service's privacy notice (PDF)

Purpose for processing

Personal information is processed to assist in the management of Health and Safety. The services process personal information in order to administer and manage accident/incident reporting for employees of Worcestershire County Council either directly or jointly with partners and commissioned private and third sector providers. 

We collect the minimum data needed:

  • to enable the electronic management system Cority
  • when you have been involved in an accident / incident (directly or indirectly) or you were a witness
  • where we assess your workstation (DSE assessment)
  • if you attend a training course or have made a request for advice and information
  • if you have any work-related injury or illness

Personal information collected and lawful basis

We collect and keep the minimum personal data required and this is mainly associated with your employment. The only exception to this is when a work-related injury or illness is reported to the Health and Safety Executive where additional personal information is required. The service processes personal information which is relevant to individual cases which may include, but is not limited to, the following personal data:

  • name and contact details
  • National Insurance Number
  • employment details

We may also process some special category (sensitive) information, which is relevant to individual cases and my include some of the following but is not limited to:

  • physical or mental health details

The legal bases for processing this personal information are:

  • legal obligation - necessary to comply with the law
  • public task – necessary to perform a task for our official functions
  • contract – necessary for the contract we have with you as an employee

Who we may share your information with

We may need to share the personal information you have given to us or we’ve collected about you with partner organisations where relevant. Your personal data is restricted to your manager and members of the Health and Safety Team processing the data. We will sometimes need to share information with other organisations and individuals, these include but are not limited to:

  • government departments
  • emergency services
  • police and other law enforcement organisations
  • other public authorities

Information will only ever be shared when it is strictly necessary to help us provide effective services and you may have the right to refuse. We will not pass it onto any other parties unless required to do so by law or in all reasonable circumstances the disclosure is fair and warranted for the purposes of processing or subject to a data protection exemption.

We have specific data sharing agreements in place with local agencies and sometimes the law requires that we may have to pass your details on to a third party, for example, to prevent crime.

How long we will hold your information

The standard record retention for Health & Safety records is 6 years from record creation. However there are also a range of other retention periods affecting different types of Health and Safety information and service needs and these range from 6 years to 72 years depending on the type of information and service. More information about our retention periods can be found in our summary Disposal Schedule (Excel file).

Please note stated retention periods may be subject to any legal holds imposed under the Inquiries Act 2005 that may concern the information and override standard retention periods.

Your information rights

You are entitled to a copy, or a description, of the personal data we hold that relates to you, subject to lawful restrictions. Please go to our Make a Data Protection Request page to find out how to make a request.

You may be entitled to rectification, restriction, objection, and erasure of your personal information depending on the service and legal basis. Please in the first instance contact dataprotection@worcestershire.gov.uk to exercise these Information Rights or call Health & Safety on 01905 845920.

Please see our overarching Privacy Notice for further contact details and if you have a complaint about your information rights.

Changes to this notice

We keep this Privacy Notice under regular review and we will place any updates on this web page.  This Notice was last updated on 07 February 2019.

Was this page useful?