Open consultation

M: Personal data

Updated 20 June 2025

Applies to England

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/the-fair-funding-review-20/m-personal-data

Annex M: Personal data

The following is to explain your rights and give you the information you are be entitled to under UK data protection legislation.

Note that this section only refers to personal data (your name, contact details and any other information that relates to you or another identified or identifiable individual personally), not the content otherwise of your response to the consultation.

1. The identity of the data controller and contact details of our Data Protection Officer    

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (the ‘Ministry’) is the data controller. The Data Protection Officer can be contacted at dataprotection@communities.gov.uk or by writing to the following address:

Data Protection Officer
Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Fry Building
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF

2. Why we are collecting your personal data  

Your personal data is being collected as an essential part of the consultation process, so that we can contact you regarding your response and for statistical purposes. We may also use it to contact you about related matters.

We will collect your IP address if you complete a consultation online. We may use this to ensure that each person only completes a survey once. We will not use this data for any other purpose.

Please do not share special category personal data or criminal offence data if we have not asked for this unless absolutely necessary for the purposes of your consultation response. By ‘special category personal data’, we mean information about a living individual’s:

  • race
  • ethnic origin
  • political opinions
  • religious or philosophical beliefs
  • trade union membership
  • genetics
  • biometrics
  • health (including disability-related information)
  • sex life
  • sexual orientation

By ‘criminal offence data’, we mean information relating to a living individual’s criminal convictions or offences or related security measures.

The collection of your personal data is lawful under article 6(1)(e) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation, as it is necessary for the performance by the Ministry of a task in the public interest/in the exercise of official authority vested in the data controller. Section 8(d) of the Data Protection Act 2018 states that this will include processing of personal data that is necessary for the exercise of a function of the Crown, a Minister of the Crown or a government department i.e. in this case a consultation.

Where necessary for the purposes of this consultation, our lawful basis for the processing of any special category personal data or ‘criminal offence’ data (terms explained under ‘Sensitive Types of Data’) which you submit in response to this consultation is as follows. The relevant lawful basis for the processing of special category personal data is Article 9(2)(g) UK GDPR (‘substantial public interest’), and Schedule 1 paragraph 6 of the Data Protection Act 2018 (‘statutory etc and government purposes’). The relevant lawful basis in relation to personal data relating to criminal convictions and offences data is likewise provided by Schedule 1 paragraph 6 of the Data Protection Act 2018.

4. With whom we will be sharing your personal data

Other government departments including:

  • Attorney General’s Office
  • Cabinet Office
  • Department for Business and Trade
  • Department for Culture, Media and Sport
  • Department for Education
  • Department for Energy Security and Net Zero
  • Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
  • Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
  • Department for Transport
  • Department for Work and Pensions
  • Department of Health and Social Care
  • Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
  • His Majesty’s Treasury
  • Home Office
  • Ministry of Defence
  • Ministry of Justice
  • Northern Ireland Office
  • Office of the Advocate General for Scotland
  • Office of the Leader of the House of Commons
  • Office of the Leader of the House of Lords
  • Office of the Secretary of State for Scotland
  • Office of the Secretary of State for Wales
  • UK Export Finance

The Ministry may appoint a ‘data processor’, acting on behalf of the department and under our instruction, to help analyse the responses to this consultation.  Where we do, we will ensure that the processing of your personal data remains in strict accordance with the requirements of the data protection legislation.

MHCLG will take reasonable and proportionate steps to remove personal data from the consultation responses before using an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool. The AI tool processes data securely and does not copy or share data. The data will only be accessed and used by those authorised to do so. 

The AI tool identifies themes present in the responses. The draft themes are reviewed and agreed by a policy team before the tool then maps responses to the themes to be used by policy teams to analyse the consultation. MHCLG will take steps to check for accuracy and identify and reduce bias.

5. For how long we will keep your personal data, or criteria used to determine the retention period.

Your personal data will be held for two years from the closure of the consultation, unless we identify that its continued retention is unnecessary before that point.

6. Your rights, e.g. access, rectification, restriction, objection

The data we are collecting is your personal data, and you have considerable say over what happens to it. You have the right:

a. to see what data we have about you

b. to ask us to stop using your data, but keep it on record

c. to ask to have your data corrected if it is incorrect or incomplete

d. to object to our use of your personal data in certain circumstances

e. to lodge a complaint with the independent Information Commissioner (ICO) if you think we are not handling your data fairly or in accordance with the law.  You can contact the ICO at https://ico.org.uk/, or telephone 0303 123 1113.

Please contact us at the following address if you wish to exercise the rights listed above, except the right to lodge a complaint with the ICO:

dataprotection@communities.gov.uk  

Knowledge and Information Access Team
Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Fry Building
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF

7. Your personal data will not be sent overseas

8. Your personal data will not be used for any automated decision making

9. Your personal data will be stored in a secure government IT system

We use a third-party system, Citizen Space, to collect consultation responses. In the first instance, your personal data will be stored on their secure UK-based server. Your personal data will be transferred to our secure government IT system as soon as possible, and it will be stored there for 2 years before it is deleted.

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