Transparency data

Privacy Notice: Test, Learn & Grow Accelerator on Economic Inactivity

Published 14 May 2026

This notice sets out how we will use your personal data, and your rights. It is made under Articles 13 and/or 14 of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). 

The Cabinet Office and Public Digital are Joint Controllers of your personal data. The Cabinet Office is acting as your primary contact point for this processing activity.

YOUR DATA 

Purpose

The purpose(s) for which we are processing your personal data is(are): 

This privacy notice covers consent-based research for the Labour Market Participation Accelerator in the Test, Learn & Grow programme. The focus of this research is to understand how policy can support people into good and meaningful work. We will be conducting research with locals in our target areas who may interact with employment, health and/or educational services.

The research will include:

• Interviews — Semi-structured and unstructured conversations with service users and providers. These are recorded with consent, transcribed, and analysed thematically. Transcripts are stored securely and pseudonymised during analysis.
• Process mapping — Conversations with council and voluntary sector staff to document how services currently operate. This may involve staff describing workflows that reference service users. To minimise the risk of capturing personal data about people who have not consented, we review local authority privacy notices beforehand, instruct participants not to include personal information about clients, and anonymise any incidentally disclosed data at the earliest opportunity (at the point of transcription for recordings and the point collection for manual notes).
• Management information audit — Management information from council services (following statistical disclosure control guidance) will be reviewed and refreshed. This may involve analysts using anonymous service level information.
• Focus groups and workshops — Group sessions exploring customer journeys, opinions on existing services, and suggested improvements. These are recorded, transcribed, and analysed. Group settings create additional confidentiality obligations, which are covered in participant agreements.
• Online surveys — We will be surveying service users and residents. 
• Observation and shadowing — Researchers observe service delivery in situ. Field notes are taken and anonymised. Where observations incidentally capture personal data about service users who are not participants, this data is not recorded or is immediately anonymised.
• Sandboxed simulations — Controlled tests of updated service provision. These may involve participants role-playing or interacting with prototype services. Data generated within simulations is treated as research data subject to the same protections.
• Diary studies - researchers provide participants with prompts and they report regular updates via writing, voice notes, video diaries or photographs. These are then recorded and transcribed where necessary. Where observations incidentally capture personal data about service users who are not participants, this data is not recorded or is immediately anonymised.

We will be collecting consent from all data subjects. For all activities above, in addition to this privacy notice we will provide an information form (containing detail on the TLG programme, the Labour Market Participation Accelerator, and our research questions).  

For participants under 16, consent will be sought from a legal proxy alongside the young person’s own assent where they have sufficient understanding (in line with the Gillick competence framework).
Tools used to collect and store data will include google forms, google meet, gemini transcription, and google drive. All data will be stored on secure government devices or on secure cloud services (Google Drive). All personal data will be stored on secure Google Drives, in access controlled folders, and in password secured documents/workbooks.

We may use AI related techniques that run on local machines and do not require external data sharing, such as BERTtopic, to assist with sentiment analysis. Google AI tools (Gemini, Notebook LM) may be used to assist in clustering themes or identifying patterns within qualitative data, but outputs will always be reviewed and interpreted by researchers. These will be used to help assure our efforts and provide challenge to our own thematic analysis, therefore speeding up the process. As this is novel technology, we will ensure that all AI outputs are quality assured, and used only in conjunction with our own, independent, findings.
There will be no decisions made about, or that directly impact, specific individuals as part of this activity.
From our research we hope to develop an in-depth understanding of Labour Market Participation and the experience of employment services among local residents.

The data

We will process the following personal data: 

• Name
• Email address, telephone number, physical address or other general location data
• Date of birth and/or age
• Nationality and ethnicity or race
• Sex
• Employment details (job title, start date or profession etc)
• Social mobility data (free school meal eligibility etc.)
• Audio or video recordings, or transcriptions (you will be informed prior to any recording regarding the specific nature of the recording)
• Information regarding the frequency and nature of your social media activity
• Information regarding your education
• Health related information
• Your opinions (for example on your previous experiences with health/employment services or ideas for policy improvements)
• Any other information you voluntarily provide during an engagement, which may include criminal allegations or convictions related information or political opinions

Legal basis of processing 

The legal basis for processing your personal data is that you, or your legal proxy, have provided opt-in consent.

Sensitive personal data, also known as special category data, is personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation.
The legal basis for processing your sensitive personal data, or data relating to criminal convictions and offences if provided during an engagement, is explicit consent (art. 9(2)(a) UK GDPR)

Recipients

Your personal data will be shared between the Cabinet Office and Public Digital as joint controllers. It may also be shared with trained qualitative researchers who act as our data processors.

In some cases, information confirming your attendance at an engagement may be shared with People for Research who provide payment services and act as an independent data controller. 

As your personal data will be stored on our IT infrastructure it will also be shared with our data processors who provide email, and document management and storage services. Your personal data may also be shared with our survey provider who acts as a data processor.

Personal data may be shared with third party user researchers who are acting as our data processors. These researchers are only involved in initial data collection.

A key output will be fully anonymised reports about our findings to be shared across partners (the local city council and interacting service providers) and findings from this research will be used to inform interventions taking place in an area such as changes to the way services operate. 

Retention 

Your personal data will be kept by us for 2 years (or earlier if it can be anonymised or consent is withdrawn).

Audio and video recordings will be deleted once transcripts are created or verified (within weeks). Transcripts will either be pseudonymised or anonymised depending on their content. The transcripts will be kept for 2 years to support analysis and anonymised reporting.

Participant contact details who have consented to re-contact will be retained securely for the duration of the project for follow-up purposes. This is not expected to last longer than 2 years, but may mean data is deleted sooner than 2 years.

Participant contact details who have not consented to re-contact will be deleted once anonymisation of outputs have taken place, and reimbursement activities requirements satisfied.

YOUR RIGHTS 

You have the right to request information about how your personal data are processed, and to request a copy of that personal data. 

You have the right to request that any inaccuracies in your personal data are rectified without delay. 

You have the right to request that any incomplete personal data are completed, including by means of a supplementary statement. 

You have the right to request that your personal data are erased if there is no longer a justification for them to be processed. 

You have the right in certain circumstances (for example, where accuracy is contested) to request that the processing of your personal data is restricted. 

You have the right to withdraw consent to the processing of your personal data at any time. Please note where data is pseudonymised, we may need further information from you to identify your data and delete it. If data has been fully anonymised it will not be possible to reidentify you and delete data.
You have the right to request a copy of any personal data you have provided, and for this to be provided in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format

INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS 

As your personal data is stored on our Corporate IT infrastructure, and shared with our data processors, it may be transferred and stored securely outside the UK. Where that is the case it will be subject to equivalent legal protection through an adequacy decision, reliance on Standard Contractual Clauses, or reliance on a UK International Data Transfer Agreement.

COMPLAINTS 

If you consider that your personal data has been misused or mishandled, you may make a complaint to the Information Commissioner, who is an independent regulator.  The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:  Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF, or 0303 123 1113, or icocasework@ico.org.uk.  Any complaint to the Information Commissioner is without prejudice to your right to seek redress through the courts. 

CONTACT DETAILS 

The Cabinet Office and Public Digital are Joint Controllers for your data.

The Cabinet Office is acting as primary contact for this processing activity and is the primary point of contact for queries or Subject Access Requests. The Cabinet Office contact details for are: Cabinet Office, 70 Whitehall, London, SW1A 2AS, or 0207 276 1234, or you can use this webform. 

The contact details for the data controller’s Data Protection Officer are: dpo@cabinetoffice.gov.uk. 

You can contact the Public Digital Data Protection Officer at data-protection-officer@public.digital