Open consultation

Privacy notice

Published 14 July 2026

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

This notice sets out how we will use your personal data, and your rights. It is made under Articles 13 and/or 14 of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). 

Your data

Purpose

The purpose for which the Office for Equality & Opportunity (OEO), within Cabinet office, is processing your personal data is to obtain the opinions of members of the public, parliamentarians and representatives of organisations and companies about departmental policies, proposals, or generally to obtain public opinion data on pay equality.

To do this we will:

Collect information on some personal characteristics of individual respondents including sex, race and disability (among other data). This information will aid and contextualise the analysis of the consultation, allowing us to identify if there are gaps in representation or trends regarding particular insights. This information will also provide us insight into who is responding to the consultation and support further stakeholder engagement to boost responses from underrepresented groups. 

We will also collect the names of organisations, and employer and employee representative bodies or networks. This is to understand the groups participating in the consultation and who they represent. 

We will not collect your name or contact details along with the personal characteristics stated above unless you request alternative formats to enable you to participate. This includes, for example, those who request Braille or an audio CD copy. This will ensure we reach a wide range of respondents which is vital to getting the best possible insight. Any identifiable information will not be shared with the supplier for analysis and will be securely deleted once the individual requests or responses have been processed. 

Only anonymised data – for example, demographic information and opinions – will be shared with our survey analysis provider, who will share aggregate information back to us.

Respondents are reminded to not provide identifiable information as part of their response such as names, locations, organisations or specific information about their own experiences. This is to make sure your responses remain anonymous.

The data

We will process the following personal data to support the above purposes: 

• name (only if interview or alternate format is requested)
• Address (only if interview or alternate format is requested)
• email address (only if interview or alternate format is requested)
• mobile or phone number (only if interview or alternate format is requested)
• name of respondent’s organisation, network or representative body if applicable, and country of the UK (or internationally) where the organisation or representative body is based 
• information on personal characteristics: ethnicity, conditions or illnesses that affect individuals, disability, age, sex, where an individual lives or is employed
• opinions and comments in response to the consultation questions

Legal basis of processing

The legal basis for processing your personal data is:

Processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the data controller. In this case that is consulting with the UK public regarding legislative change proposals. 

Sensitive personal data is personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation. 

How we use your sensitive data (special category data):

If you provide your contact details to request an alternative format of this survey, we will temporarily process information about your accessibility needs.

Our legal basis:

Under data protection law, our legal basis for processing this sensitive information is that it is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest. Specifically, we meet the following conditions under the UK Data Protection Act 2018:

Statutory and Government Purposes: To allow us to carry out our public function of consulting the UK public on proposed legislative changes.

Equality of Opportunity or Treatment: To ensure that individuals with health conditions or disabilities have equal opportunity to participate in this consultation.

Recipients

We use a third-party platform, SmartSurvey, to host and administer this survey. SmartSurvey acts as our data processor and handles data strictly on our instructions.

To ensure the survey is completely anonymous, we have configured the platform to use an “anonymous survey” feature. This means:

No IP address storage: Your IP address is processed strictly in temporary computer memory (RAM) to establish the necessary internet connection (TCP/UDP) to load the survey. It is instantly discarded, is never written to a disk or database, and cannot be observed by us or any user.

Duplicate prevention: A standard functional cookie is placed on your browser solely to prevent multiple survey submissions from the same device. This cookie does not identify you personally.

Aside from this essential connection infrastructure, no personal identifiable data or identifying metadata is disclosed to or stored by SmartSurvey.

Your anonymised data will be shared by us with our contracted external research company who will analyse the consultation responses, as instructed by the Cabinet Office.

Any personal data we receive to enable alternate formats to be provided will be stored on our IT infrastructure and shared with our data processors who provide email, document management and storage services.

Retention 

Your personal data will be kept by us for the following periods: 

A list of people who have requested alternative formats will be kept while their individual requests are being processed after which all  associated personal data will be deleted. 

Anonymous responses will be retained for the duration of the consultation, and will be destroyed 3 calendar years after the consultation has concluded, or when the information is no longer required to be stored for active use on Bill development, whichever is first.

Your rights

You have the right to request information about how your personal data are processed, and to request a copy of that personal data. 

You have the right to request that any inaccuracies in your personal data are rectified without delay. 

You have the right to request that any incomplete personal data are completed, including by means of a supplementary statement. 

You have the right to request that your personal data are erased if there is no longer a justification for them to be processed. 

You have the right in certain circumstances (for example, where accuracy is contested) to request that the processing of your personal data is restricted. 

You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data. 

International transfers

As your personal data is stored on our corporate IT infrastructure, and shared with our data processors, it may be transferred and stored securely outside the UK. Where that is the case it will be subject to equivalent legal protection through an adequacy decision, reliance on standard contractual clauses, or reliance on a UK international data transfer agreement.

As your data will be shared with Cabinet Office contracted researchers who provide analysis of the consultation response services to us, it may be stored securely outside the UK. Where that is the case, the data must be stored in a location permitted by and in accordance with any regulations for the being in force made under 17A of the Data Protection Act 2018 (adequacy decisions by the Secretary of State). 

Data shared with our survey platform supplier (SmartSurvey) who provides survey hosting services to us, will be stored securely in the UK. 

Complaints

If you consider that your personal data has been misused or mishandled, you may make a complaint to the Information Commissioner, who is an independent regulator.  The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Phone: 0303 123 1113

Email: icocasework@ico.org.uk

Any complaint to the Information Commissioner is without prejudice to your right to seek redress through the courts. 

Contact details

The data controller for your personal data is the Cabinet Office. The contact details for the data controller are: 

Cabinet Office
70 Whitehall
London
SW1A 2AS

Phone: 0207 276 1234 

You can also use this webform. 

The contact details for the data controller’s Data Protection Officer are: dpo@cabinetoffice.gov.uk. 

The Data Protection Officer provides independent advice and monitoring of Cabinet Office’s use of personal information.

Agreement 

By reading this privacy notice and proceeding with the survey, you are indicating  that you agree to the collection, processing and storing of your data in line with processes outlined above. 

As part of the analysis of the consultation, we will publish a summary of findings, including direct quotes. Quotations will not state the name of the individual or organisation who provided them but will state whether they were an organisational or individual response. If you do not wish your response to be used to generate anonymised quotes, please tick the box where indicated on the SmartSurvey response form.