Guidance

Data Protection - information charter

Published 14 January 2011

© Crown copyright 2011

This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: psi@nationalarchives.gov.uk.

Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.

This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/data-protection-information-charter/data-protection-information-charter

Introduction

This information charter sets out the standards that you can expect from HMRC when we request or hold information about you during your dealings with us, so that we can provide better services for you. It also sets out how you can help us make sure the information we hold about you is accurate.

All information that HMRC holds is subject to our duty of confidentiality. We know how important it is to protect customers’ privacy and to comply with the Data Protection legislation. As such, we will not give your information to anyone, including government departments and their agencies, local authorities, the police or any other public or private sector bodies unless we have lawful authority to do so.

Our promise to you

Our purpose, vision and way states that: ‘we recognise that we have privileged access to information and we will protect it.’

We will only ask you for information we need to do our jobs. We will:

  • protect information we obtain, receive or hold about you
  • explain why we need information, if you ask us to
  • only allow our staff to see information when they need it to do their job
  • give you the information we hold about you when you ask for it, as long as the law lets us
  • only share or release information about you when the law lets us and we need to
  • make sure we do not keep information about you longer than necessary

In return, to keep information reliable and up to date we ask you:

  • be honest - give us accurate information promptly when we ask for it
  • take care to get things right - tell us as soon as possible of any changes, such as a change of address

Further information

Go to information we hold about you or how to complain to HMRC to get more details on:

  • how to find out what information we hold about you and how to ask us to correct any mistakes
  • agreements we have with other organisations for sharing information
  • how we check that the information we hold is accurate and up to date

For independent advice about data protection, privacy and data-sharing issues, you can contact the Information Commissioner at:

Wycliffe House,
Water Lane,
Wilmslow,
Cheshire,
SK9 5AF

Telephone: 08456 30 60 60 or 01625 54 57 45
Fax: 01625 524510
Website: Information Commissioner

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