Guidance

Places of Worship Protective Security Funding Scheme and Protective Security for Mosques Scheme: privacy information notice

Updated 20 July 2023

Introduction

This document outlines how and why we use the information you provide in your application to the Places of Worship Protective Security Scheme or the Protective Security for Mosques Scheme and how it will be looked after.

Your personal information, supplied for the purposes of this application, will be held and processed by the Home Office, 2 Marsham Street, London, SW1P 4DF. The Home Office is the controller of this information.

Details of the Department’s Data Protection Officer can be found in the Home Office personal information charter, and the bottom of this privacy information notice.

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 Home Office is only allowed to process your data where there is a lawful basis for doing so. The processing of this information is necessary for the Home Office to undertake a public task as defined under Article 6(1)(e) of the General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) i.e. the processing is necessary for the Home Office to perform a task in the public interest or for its official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law. Here, applicant data is processed for the purpose of delivering the public task of protecting the public through the activities conducted as part of the Places of Worship Protective Security Scheme and the Protective Security for Mosques Scheme.

The aims of this data collection are:

  • to gather personal data relating to the person making the application, for the purposes of contacting them in relation to the application outcome
  • to gather information regarding the place of worship or associated faith community centre for the purposes of considering their funding application
  • 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

The Home Office have appointed Esotec Limited as the chosen contractor for installing physical protective security measures at places of worship and associated faith community centres.

Your application form data will be shared between the Home Office and Esotec Limited via a secure file transfer system. The processing of this information is necessary for the Home

Office to deliver the public task of protecting the public through activities conducted as part of the Places of Worship Protective Security Funding Scheme and the Protective Security for Mosques Scheme.

Home Office and Esotec Limited will not share or store data outside of the UK. All data processing throughout the PoW Protective Security Funding Scheme will take place in the UK.

Processing your individual application

The personal data provided on the application form will be used by the Home Office to conduct due diligence checks. The Home Office will share personal data with the following partners:

  • Police Designing Out Crime Officers (DOCO)
  • Charity Commission Community Coordinators
  • Welsh Government
  • Esotec

Your data will be shared with the above partners to enable the Home Office to perform the purposes of delivering the public task of protecting the public through the activities conducted as part of the schemes. The following table highlights all data sharing arrangements under these schemes.

Processor/Controller Purpose Content Shared
Police Designing Out Crime Officers (DOCO) (Processor) To help the DOCO better understand hate crimes or incidents that have been experienced but not reported to the police. This additional information will help DOCOs decide which protective security measures should be installed. All information provided on the application form, except any personally identifiable information (e.g. named contact), which will be removed.
Welsh Government (Controller) For applicants who have been unsuccessful in the Schemes, the Home Office will share your information with the Welsh Government to allow them to identify if other faith funding opportunities are available. Information shared with the Welsh Government is limited to your contact details. This information will not be passed on to them until you have been informed of the outcome of your application.
Charity Commission (Processor) Charity Commission will receive information including the name and address of the site will run due diligence checks. The Home Office will share the name, charity number and address of your PoW.

This PIN will be updated once a supplier for guarding services has been identified for the Protective Security for Mosques Scheme.

Should the Home Office suspect an individual or an organisation of improper use of funding, your personal data may be shared with the Charity Commission and law enforcement organisations. This personal data will be limited to the contact details of the applicant, the name and address of the place of worship or associated faith community centre, and the reasons why an improper use of funding is suspected.

The personal data provided will also be used by the Home Office to send communications to you that are related specifically to your application and (in the case of successful applicants) arrangements for the delivery of agreed security measures.

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. Your personal data will not be processed using automated decision-making technology or for the purposes of profiling. You are not under a statutory or contractual obligation to provide your data to the Home Office. However, if you do not share this information, we cannot process your application any further.

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 these schemes where information is provided that relates to activity outside the improper use of funding, such as criminal acts, it is unlikely that identifiable information would be used to action any disclosure of threat, crime or harm. Should the Home Office or Esotec Limited suspect an individual or an organisation of using the schemes to warn of a threat to life, we will share this information with local police. Should an individual or organisation use the schemes to report a past crime, this will not be passed to the police.

Responses received into the email inbox will not be routinely monitored, and information will not be shared in real time. Emergencies or threats to life 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 the Home Office directly with a disclosure, our normal disclosure processes will be followed.

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. More details of this policy can be found here.

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.

To access your personal data, please email us at info.access@homeoffice.gov.uk.

Or write to:

Information Rights Team
Home Office
Lower Ground Floor, Seacole Building
2 Marsham Street
London

Other rights

In certain circumstances you have the right to object to and restrict the use of your personal information, or to ask to have your data deleted, or corrected.

Freedom of Information

Data subjects (applicants or those otherwise named in applications) will have the right of access to their personal data under the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulations.

Your personal information provided in the application, including information relating to the named contact, and to the place of worship or associated faith community centre, will not be published or disclosed in accordance with the access to information regimes (these are primarily the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR).

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 below.

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 write 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.

Telephone: 08456 30 60 60 or 01625 54 57 45.

Fax: 01625 524510

Or write to:

Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

You can also visit the Information Commissioner’s website.