The Council processes personal information in order to enable the individual to volunteer for work in Worcestershire County Council. This includes:

• to promote volunteering opportunities or events in the county and recruit and match volunteers for these opportunities or events
• administration of volunteer agreements and arrangements
• safeguarding of Worcestershire County Council clients and customers
• payment of expenses
• support the delivery of services
• assess performance of the Love Volunteering portal and set targets
• enable us to monitor our equalities duties
• ensure we meet statutory obligations

The service processes personal information which is relevant to individual cases which may include, but is not limited to, the following personal data:

• name
• gender
• date of birth
• contact details (personal and emergency)
• bank account details (if claiming expenses)
• National Insurance Number
• opportunities you have applied to
• your volunteer hours
• work related training / awards
• comments on your record around your volunteering activity
• online identifiers e.g. IP address
• photographs

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

• ethnicity
• health / disability data

The legal bases for processing this personal data are:

• Consent (UK GDPR Article 6 (1)(a)) – you have given clear consent to process your personal data for a specific purpose. 

  If you have given us explicit permission, we may share your name and contact information with selected Worcestershire County Council partners or other organisations we believe may offer volunteering opportunities of interest to you. Additionally, when you apply for opportunities hosted by other providers on the Love Volunteering Worcestershire portal, your information will be shared with those organisations to enable them to process your application and manage your volunteering activity

• Legal obligation (UK GDPR Article 6 (1)(c)) – processing is necessary to comply with the law. 

  In some volunteer roles, we must process your information in order to comply with a statutory obligation. Including:

  • Safeguarding of vulnerable adults and children (The Care Act 2014, Children and Families Act 2014, and The Children’s Act 2004)
  • Proof that volunteer is legally able to fulfil the volunteer role (e.g. Volunteer drivers must have current drivers’ licence, with no more than 6 points)
  • Volunteer Safety and Security (protected as non-employees, under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, whilst undertaking duties under their control, WCC Public Liability Insurance)
  • We may be required to give information to legal authorities if requested or if they have the proper authorisation such as a search warrant or court order
• Public Task (UK GDPR Article 6 (1)(e)) – where it is necessary for the Council to perform its statutory functions and deliver services in the public interest.

• Legitimate Interest (UK GDPR Article 6 (1)(f)) – the processing is necessary for our legitimate interests, but is only applied where the Council is not performing its official functions. We will use your personal data in order to deliver a service to you, including your profile, provide you with recommendations of volunteering opportunities, and recruitment process and training, depending on volunteer role you apply for. We may also use your email address to contact you about changes to our service. 

  When you apply to become a volunteer you willingly enter a voluntary agreement, formed between you and Worcestershire County Council. In order to carry out our obligations under that agreement we must process the information you give us, as set out in the purpose for processing.

  When there is no contractual relationship, for example when you contact us (via telephone, web-form or email) asking for more information about volunteering, you provide your consent to us to collect and process information that may be personal information in order to reply with the information you need. We may record your enquiry and our response in order to increase the efficiency and quality of our service to you. Wherever possible, we aim to obtain your explicit consent to process this information, for example, by asking you to agree to our use of cookies or explain at the beginning of a telephone call.

  We also may use the information collected automatically, such as your IP address and information stored via cookies, to gather statistics about the number of people who visit our website to customise its content, layout and services.

The special category conditions for processing are:

• Substantial public interest (UK GDPR Article 9(2)(g)) - we rely on the ‘equality of opportunity or treatment’ and “support for individuals with a particular disability or medical” conditions from Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018.

  Worcestershire County Council may process special category data—such as information relating to ethnicity, gender, and other characteristics—for the purpose of monitoring recruitment statistics and fulfilling its obligations under the Equality Act 2010, including the Public Sector Equality Duty.

  We may also collect information about whether volunteer applicants have a disability or medical condition in order to make reasonable adjustments within the workplace environment.

Under 16s

If you are under 16 and wish to become a volunteer, we must have the consent of your parents or guardian to become a volunteer.

Anonymised and pseudonymised data

Your personal data may be aggregated with others and anonymised to create statistics that will be used to plan and evaluate. Only the data controller will have access to the original data. No one else who accesses this data will be able to see from whom the data originated, nor be able to trace it back to you.

We may need to share the personal information you have given to us or we’ve collected about you with partner organisations where relevant to your volunteering activities. These include but are not limited to:

• Relevant Worcestershire County Council Services
• Worcestershire County Council Recruitment team
• Worcestershire County Council HR and Payroll
• West Mercia Police
• Other providers on the Love Volunteering portal when you have given your explicit consent. Please note: where volunteers apply to opportunities hosted by other organisations on the Love Volunteering portal, those organisations may act as independent Controllers for the personal data they collect and process. Volunteers are encouraged to review the privacy notices of those organisations before applying

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.

The standard record retention for volunteer records is 6 years after the volunteer ceases volunteering activity with Worcestershire County Council. More information about our retention periods can be found in our summary Disposal Schedule.

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.

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 webpage 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 the main Worcestershire County Council contact telephone number of 01905 765765.

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