Guidance

Traffic Commissioners for Great Britain: privacy notice

Updated 19 October 2023

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

1. Introduction

This privacy notice describes how we will deal with processing personal data collected and used by the traffic commissioners for Great Britain. This notice is intended to cover communications to and from the traffic commissioners whether in electronic format, paper format or by telephone. When we refer to personal data, we mean any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person ^{[footnote 1]}.

The purpose of this notice is to inform you what information is collected about you, by whichever means; how this information is used; if it is disclosed and ways in which we protect your privacy. This privacy notice was drafted with brevity and clarity in mind and explains what you should expect when we process your personal data. It is not intended to provide exhaustive detail of all aspects of how the traffic commissioners may collect and use personal information. Where requested, we will endeavour to provide any additional information or explanation needed. Requests should be sent to us using our contact details below.

Who we are

Traffic commissioners are responsible for the licensing and regulation of those who operate heavy goods vehicles, buses and coaches, and the registration of local bus services.The traffic commissioner is a tribunal of the Department for Transport.

There are eight traffic commissioners within Great Britain, and they are appointed to geographic regions defined as East of England, London and South East of England, North East of England, North West of England, West of England, West Midlands, Wales and Scotland.

The traffic commissioners are independent appointees of the Secretary of State and are responsible for the application and issue of operator licences. They are the industry regulators for GB, in respect of the holders of goods and passenger vehicle operator licences and those who drive Heavy Goods and Passenger Carrying Vehicles.

Our contact details

Office of the Traffic Commissioners for Great Britain
Jubilee House
Croydon Street
Bristol
BS5 0GB

Phone: 0300 123 9000

E-mail: tcfoi@otc.gov.uk

When do we collect information about you?

We collect information about you when you:

• use our Vehicle Licensing service (VOL);
• use our general information services, e.g. subscribers to our RSS feeds, e-newsletters, email alerts or request a publication from us;
• engage with the traffic commissioners, or whose data we are provided with, as part of our carrying out of our regulatory functions and related activities;
• contact us in relation to information requests, complaints and general queries.

When you access VOL, the traffic commissioners use GOV.UK One Login, a system that provides a single account for you to sign in, prove your identity and access different government services. GOV.UK One Login authenticates users and verifies their identities on behalf of other government services. More information about this is provided in the GOV.UK ID Check app privacy notice.

2. Who uses your data

A traffic commissioner will use your personal information as part of their work as the competent authority for assessing access to the occupation of road transport operators, their statutory functions relating to vocational driving licencing, and their shared objectives to ensure road safety and fair competition. The link below will provide further information.

Senior Traffic Commissioner statutory guidance and statutory directions

They may share it with:

• other Traffic Commissioners
• Department for Transport
• Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency
• Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency
• other government departments
• Department for Infrastructure Northern Ireland
• enforcement agencies
• industry regulators within other EU member states

for the purposes of access to the occupation of road transport operators, road safety, the prevention or detection of crime and/or administration related to local bus service registrations.

We use Google Analytics to collect information about how you use GOV.UK and the Vehicle Operator Licensing service (VOL). This anonymised data is shared with the Government Digital Service (GDS).

Cookies

A cookie is a text-only string of information that a website transfers to the cookie file of the browser on your computer’s hard disk so that the website can remember who you are. A cookie will typically contain the name of the domain from which the cookie has come, the “lifetime” of the cookie, and a value, usually a randomly generated unique number.

When you visit our website, we send you a cookie. Cookies may be used in the following ways:

• To enable the personalisation features on our website (which give you the ability to recall recently viewed pages and see information which you have input online).
• To compile anonymous, aggregated statistics that allow us to understand how users use our site and to help us improve the structure of our website. We cannot identify you personally in this way.
• Two types of cookies may be used on this website: session cookies, which are temporary cookies that remain in the cookie file of your browser until you leave the site, and persistent cookies, which remain in the cookie file of your browser for much longer (though how long will depend on the lifetime of the specific cookie).

Further information on cookies

Links to other websites

We are not responsible for the content or reliability of the linked websites and do not necessarily endorse the views expressed within them. We cannot guarantee that these links will work all of the time and we have no control over the availability of linked pages.

This privacy statement does not cover any links within this site linking to other websites. We encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit.

3. Why and how we use your data

We will use the information you provide in a manner that complies with all relevant data protection law, primarily the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other relevant data protection and privacy laws. It is our responsibility to keep your information accurate and up to date and not keep it for longer than is necessary, and in accordance with our current data retention policy.

We collect your data so that:

• Traffic commissioners can make decisions on applications for and to vary operator’s licences.
• Traffic commissioners can regulate goods and passenger vehicle operators in accordance with the statutory provisions. - Should you be called to Public Inquiry, data from previous applications may be included and the information made available to other operators also called to the Public Inquiry.
• Traffic commissioners can make decisions on applications for, to vary and to cancel local bus services.
• The Traffic Commissioner for Scotland can make decisions with regards to appeals against decisions by Scottish local authorities on taxi fares
• Traffic commissioners can communicate proactively with targeted groups of applicants and operator licence holders for the purposes of discharging a function that is designed to protect members of the public. The lawful basis for processing your data in this way is the exercise of a public task as defined by statute.
• Traffic Commissioners can regulate the suitability of applicants and existing licence holders of vocational driving entitlement, with regards to their conduct.

It is possible to start an application for a licence or to change a licence but not submit it for consideration by the traffic commissioner. Applications which are started but not submitted will not be processed by the traffic commissioner unless you specifically ask for assistance. Applications that are started but not submitted will be deleted in accordance with the traffic commissioner’s data retention policy.

If you apply for a standard licence, we’re legally required to add your details to a national register of operators to comply with EU Regulation 1071/2009.

Failure to provide requested data in accordance with relevant Goods Vehicles or Public Passenger Vehicles legislation may result in your application being refused. The link below will provide further information.

Senior Traffic Commissioner statutory guidance and statutory directions

Failure to keep your records up to date may result in traffic commissioner taking action against your licence which could include revocation.

We do not use automated decision making based upon the data you provide nor do we use your data for marketing purposes.

4. The categories of data we collect

The majority of data we collect is defined as personal data under UK data protection legislation and the General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) EU 2016/679, but we also collect special category data when we ask about convictions that may be relevant to your application or operator licence. We may also collect additional special category data if you are attending a public inquiry in relation to your application or licence. The collection of such data will be accordance with the statutory obligations of the traffic commissioners.

5. The personal and special category data we collect about you

We collect personal data that allows us to identify you. Your personal data may include:

• your name
• your contact details including addresses, telephone numbers and email address
• your driving licence number
• vehicle details
• financial history when we ask for evidence of financial standing such as bank statements
• details of where you keep your vehicles
• operator licence history, including your Operator Identity Code

We may also collect special category data about you as part of our processing including information about relevant criminal convictions or your physical or mental health.

We may receive personal and special category data about you from the bodies noted above, for example, the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency may provide information about maintenance investigations and/or details of offences or convictions.

6. How long we keep your personal information

We will keep your data only for as long as it is required for the purposes noted above, after which it is securely destroyed.

The data you provide will be kept and destroyed in accordance with the Traffic Commissioner data retention schedule. You can request a copy by contacting 0300 123 9000 or TCFOI@otc.gov.uk.

The lawful basis for the traffic commissioners to process your information is based on legal obligation in line with Article 6(1)(c) of the GDPR. Processing is also necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest. The purpose of discharging the traffic commissioner’s statutory function is designed to protect members of the public. The processing of your data in this way is the exercise of a public task in line with Article 6(1)(e) of the GDPR.

7. Where we store your data

Any data you provide will be stored on our servers in Ireland. We do not store data outside of the European Economic Area (the European Economic Area being the European Union and Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, also referred to as the “EEA”).

8. Your rights

Under data protection law, you have rights including:

Your right of access

You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.

Your right to object

You have the right to object to us processing personal data we hold about you.

Your right to rectification

You have the right to ask us to rectify information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete. We may need to investigate further to confirm that this is the case.

Right to restrict processing

Where you have sought to exercise any of your other rights in relation to personal data that we hold about you, or you consider that we are processing your data unlawfully, you have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal data.

Requests to exercise any of your rights in relation to your personal data should be made in writing and sent to the email or postal addresses given above.

You have the right to know if we hold data about you and how we use it.

You have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner if you believe that we have handled your data inappropriately or we have not exercised any of your rights.

You have the right not to be subject to decisions which have a legal or significant effect based solely on ‘automated processing’. This includes:

• automatic individual decision-making (a decision is made solely by automated means without any human involvement)
• profiling (personal data is processed automatically to evaluate certain things about an individual); profiling can be part of an automated decision-making process

The following rights do not apply where processing is based on a legal obligation:

• the right to object to processing
• the right to data portability, which allows individuals to get and reuse their personal data for their own purposes across different services
• the right to withdraw consent

These rights are explained fully on the Information Commissioner’s Office website.

9. Security of your data

The Traffic Commissioners and their data processor, the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, take appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure your data is protected at all times. We use high grade encryption TLS 1.1/1.2 to protect any data that you transmit to us via the Internet. For payments, we adhere to high standards to protect your payment details - we use a PCI-compliant payment provider and we do not store your card details outside of that PCI-compliant service.

We provide training to staff who handle personal information, including temporary staff. All staff are subject to the Civil Service Code and may be subject to disciplinary procedure if they misuse or do not look after your personal information properly.

10. Public search facilities

We make some data available to the public through GOV.UK. This is limited to data, which is required to be made public where there is a legislative requirement or is published in the public interest. Your data will continue to be included within the published records after your licence has ended.

Search queries and their results are logged anonymously, to help us improve our website and search functionality. No user-specific data is collected.

11. Requesting access to your data

You have the right to request access to the personal data we hold about you by making a ‘subject access request’. If you would like to request a copy of your personal data please contact us at tcfoi@otc.gov.uk

You will need to provide us with information to help prove your identity and find the information you are asking for so that we can process your request.

There is no fee for making a subject access request. We will respond to a request within a month of receiving it, unless it is a complex request. In these cases, we will write to explain why there is a delay and when you can expect to get a response.

12. Queries and complaints

You can lodge a complaint regarding the processing of your personal data or raise a query in relation to rectification, erasure, restriction and portability, at any time by contacting the Traffic Commissioner’s Data Protection Officer at tcfoi@otc.gov.uk or by post at:

Jubilee House
Croydon Street
Bristol
BS5 0GB

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office if you think there is a problem with how we are handling your data. The ICO’s contact details are:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Phone: 0303 123 1113

13. Updates to our privacy notice

We will review and change this privacy notice to reflect changes in our services, as well as to comply with changes to the law. By doing this we will make sure you are always aware of what information we collect and how we use it. Any changes will be published as a new version of this policy.

1. Article 4(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation ↩