Emergency response
Updated 4 May 2023
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/maritime-and-coastguard-agency-privacy-notices/emergency-response
This privacy notice explains how the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) process data about you when you have accessed HM Coastguard services.
What information do we collect about you?
The following personal information may be collected:
- your full name
- your date of birth
- your age
- your gender
- nationality
- your hometown or address if known
- your contact details
- your phone number
- your incident location
- images collected through HM Coastguard platforms
- voice recordings
The following special category data will be collected by the MCA in an emergency to protect your vital interests and for reasons of substantial public interest. The data is retained to ensure the integrity of the incident record should this be lawfully required.
Your current medical condition during an incident including injuries sustained.
- your medical history if provided
- any currently prescribed medicine
How we use the information about you
Personal information gathered by our coastguard teams will be processed by the MCA in order to facilitate and coordinate rescues, preserve the safety of life and to enable the MCA to carry out our public task and our compliance to investigate significant breaches of safety and environmental aspects of merchant shipping legislation, we will use the information collected to improve awareness of coastal and maritime water related incidents.
We will use the information gathered for the purposes of identifying improvement to the HM Coastguard service, review the performance of HM Coastguard response to incidents, identify critical times, activities, units and organisations involved, and events and actions taken.
Our communications team may contact you to invite you to contribute to a news story or similar communications activity related to your experience. This is optional, and you can ask our communications team not to contact you again for this purpose. In some cases where a story is deemed newsworthy it may not be possible to obtain consent prior to use in these cases we will employ high ethical standards to ensure that graphic, embarrassing or inappropriate material is not publicised and will always consider the impact to the data subjects before agreeing to release data, this could include video footage and audio recordings of rescues. Any data shared with media companies will have a data sharing agreement in place to ensure data sharing complies with data protection legislation.
Personal information about you can be provided to us during an incident by other category 1 and 2 responders as defined by the Civil Contingencies Act 2004.
Retaining your information
Your information will be kept securely and retained for 20 years unless required to support ongoing investigations and other reasons of public interest.
Sharing your information
If you contact us directly to report an incident, we will ask you for your contact details which will be shared with our coastguard rescue officers who will contact you directly, this may also include any relevant medical details at the time of the incident which will ensure appropriate rescue.
In certain rescue circumstances it may be necessary for us to share your data with global Search and Rescue authorities and those delegated competent authorities such as category 1 and 2 responders and UK declared search and rescue units.
Information relating to incidents is shared with the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB), who are part of the Department for Transport, for them to carry out their legal duties under the provisions of the Merchant Shipping (Accident Reporting and Investigation) Regulations 2012. To see how the MAIB handle your personal data please see their Personal Information Charter.
We may share personal information within our organisation or with other bodies where we are permitted to do so by law. There are some cases where we can pass on your information without telling you, for example, to prevent or detect crime, or in order to produce anonymised statistics. In all cases, whether data is shared internally or externally we will be governed by data protection law.
The MCA, a member of the National Water Safety Forum, works to reduce water related deaths. Information collected through emergency response is shared with other government departments and academics. Data is only shared for research and statistical purposes, with data sharing agreements in place for personal data to ensure data sharing complies with data protection legislation.
Storing your information
We will securely store your personal information in the UK. We do not routinely transfer data overseas but when this is necessary, we will ensure that we have the appropriate safeguards in place.
Automated decision making
We will not use automated decision making or profiling in using your data.
Your rights
The UK GDPR sets out a number of rights which individuals have over their personal data, allowing you to request copies of your personal data and, in certain circumstances, to object to it being used for a certain purpose, or to have it deleted or modified.
To find out more please see our Personal information charter.