Closed consultation

Protecting places of worship consultation: data information document (accessible version)

Updated 31 August 2021

Introduction

This document outlines how and why we use the information you provide in your response to the Consultation on Protecting Places of Worship, and how it will be looked after.

Your personal information, supplied for the purposes of this consultation, will be held and processed by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen). The Home Office is the controller of this information. This also includes when it is collected or processed by third parties on our behalf.

Details of the Department’s Data Protection Officer can be found in the Home Office personal information charter.

Any information held by NatCen will also be held by the Home Office.

NatCen are responsible for the collection, processing and storage of the data. Further information on their policies are below.

How and why the Department uses your information

The Home Office collects, processes and shares personal information to enable it to carry out its statutory and other functions.

The aims of this data collection are to:

• gather useful data on the scale and complexity of protecting places of worship and worshippers as well as faith-based hate crime more generally.
• develop new and innovative policies to improve the security of worshippers and the places of worship
• adapt and improve current and upcoming programmes including the places of worship fund and the new security training programme
• see how we can provide security more effectively including integration of other government strategies and funds

The Home Office is only allowed to process your data where there is a lawful basis for doing so. Data is processed for the purpose of delivering the public task of protecting the public through the activities conducted as part of the Faith Institution Security Consultation and any resulting work stream.

The Home Office may share your information with other organisations in the course of carrying out our functions, or to enable others to perform theirs.

The data provided on the response form will be collected by NatCen and processed by them. This information will then be shared with the Home Office in both a summary and individual format.

Home Office and NatCen will not share or store data outside of the UK.

The Home Office may share a summary of responses and analysis with wider stakeholders to enable the delivery of security for worshippers. Personal information will be removed.

More information about the ways in which the Home Office may use your personal information, including the purposes for which we use it, the legal basis, and who your information may be shared with can be found in the Home Office personal information charter.

Disclosure Notice

In the course of this consultation, it is unlikely that identifiable information would be available to action any disclosure of threat, crime or harm. Should the Home Office or NatCen suspect an individual or an organisation of using the consultation to warn of a threat to life, we will share this information with local police or the police commissioner. Should an individual or an organisation use the consultation to report a past crime, this will not be passed to police. However, responses will not be routinely monitored, and information will not be shared in real time. Emergencies or threats to lift should be reported to 999. All criminal activities should be passed to local police or dial 999 in an emergency. If participants are to contact NatCen or the Home Office directly with a disclosure, our normal disclosure processes will be followed.

How NatCen will process your data

NatCen are collecting the data for this consultation on behalf of the Home Office and will have access to the data collected through the consultation. Information will not be shared in real time.

The results collected are used for consultation purposes only. All data that has been collected is handled in accordance with data protection legislation. The information you provide will be analysed alongside other responses to the consultation and used to write summary outputs (such as published and internal reports and presentations) for the Home Office. Where you have provided identifiable data, the findings will be anonymised, and we will not include the names of individuals or specific locations.

More information about NatCen is on the NatCen website.

Storing your information

Your personal information will be held for seven years by the Home Office for the purpose for which it is being processed and in line with departmental retention policy.

The data held by NatCen will be stored securely, in line with international best practice and NatCen’s ISO 27001, ISO 20252 and Cyber Essentials Plus certifications. All data will be securely deleted one year after completion of the project. Anonymised data collected specifically for the research will be retained for 2 years after the completion of the research by the Home Office or at the National Archives.

Sharing your data

Your data will be stored and processed by NatCen. All data will be processed and stored in the UK. Full information will be passed onto and stored by policy advisors at the Home Office. All personal information will be deleted one year after the publication of a response.

Detailed analysis may be shared with policy advisors and Ministers in both the Home Office and other government departments including the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Department of Education.

Summary analysis will be published and shared with stakeholders. This information will be stripped of any identifying factors.

Freedom of Information

Information provided in response to this consultation, including personal information, may be published or disclosed in accordance with the access to information regimes (these are primarily the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004).

If you want the information that you provide to be treated as confidential, please be aware that, under the FOIA, there is a statutory Code of Practice with which public authorities must comply and which deals, amongst other things, with obligations of confidence. In view of this it would be helpful if you could explain to us why you regard the information you have provided as confidential in your response.

If we receive a request for disclosure of the information, we will take full account of your explanation, but we cannot give an assurance that confidentiality can be maintained in all circumstances. An automatic confidentiality disclaimer generated by your IT system will not, of itself, be regarded as binding on the Home Office.

The Home Office will process your personal data in accordance with the DPA and in the majority of circumstances, this will mean that your personal data will not be disclosed to third parties.

Requesting access to your personal data

You have the right to request access to the personal information the Home Office holds about you. Details of how to make the request can be found in the Home Office personal information charter.

Questions or concerns about personal data

If you have any questions, concern or complaint about the collection, use or disclosure of your personal information please contact the Home Office via the contact details found in the Home Office.

This privacy notice has been created to be understandable and concise. If you would like more information the Home Office has a data protection officer who can be contacted by:

email: dpo@homeoffice.gov.uk

telephone: 020 7035 6999

or writing to:

Office of the DPO
Home Office
Peel Building
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF

You have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office about the way the Home Office is handling your personal information. Details on how you do this can be found in the Home Office personal information charter.

You are also able to contact the lead researcher at NatCen at protectingplacesofworship@natcen.ac.uk or on 0207 549 7161, with any questions about the research and the process of handling data from NatCen’s perspective.