Privacy Statement for Registering Candidates and Agents Prior to Elections and Referendums

Who we are:

Comhairle nan Eilean Siar is a local authority established under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994 which helps to administer elections on behalf of the appointed Returning Officer. Its head office is located at Council Offices, Sandwick Road, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, HS1 2BW, United Kingdom and you can contact our Data Protection Officer by post at this address, by email at: dataprotection@cne-siar.gov.uk or telephone 01851 822613

Why do we need your personal information and what do we do with it?

You are giving us your personal information to allow the Returning Officer to register you as a candidate or agent for a forthcoming election or referendum. We also use your information to verify your identity where required, contact you by post, email or telephone
and to maintain our records.

Legal basis for using your information:

We are registering you on behalf of the appointed Returning Officer for this area. You can find more details of our role on our website. Processing your personal information is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest by the council.
If you do not provide us with the information we have asked for, then we will not be able to provide this service to you.

Who do we share your information with?

We are legally obliged to safeguard public funds so we are required to verify and check your details internally for fraud prevention. We may share this information with other public bodies (and also receive information from these other bodies) for fraud checking purposes.
We are also legally obliged to share certain data with other public bodies, such as HMRC and will do so where the law requires this. We will also generally comply with requests for specific information from other regulatory and law enforcement bodies where this is necessary and appropriate. Your information is also analysed internally to help us improve our services.

How long do we keep your information for?

We only keep your personal information for the minimum period amount of time necessary.
Sometimes this time period is set out in the law, but in most cases it is based on the business need

Your rights under data protection law:

• access to your information – you have the right to request a copy of the personal information that we hold about you.
• correcting your information – we want to make sure that your personal information is accurate, complete and up to date. Therefore, you may ask us to correct any personal information about you that you believe does not meet these standards.
• Deletion of your information – you have the right to ask us to delete personal information about you where:
  (i) you think that we no longer need to hold the information for the purposes for which it was originally obtained
  (ii) you have a genuine objection to our use of your personal information – see Objecting to how we may use your information below
  (iii) our use of your personal information is contrary to law or our other legal obligations.

Objecting to how we may use your information – You have the right at any time to tell us to stop using your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
Restricting how we may use your information – in some cases, you may ask us to restrict how we use your personal information. This right might apply, for example, where we are checking the accuracy of personal information that we hold about you or we are assessing the objection you have made to our use of your information. This right might also apply if we no longer have a basis for using your personal information, but you don’t want us to delete the data. Where this right is realistically applied will mean that we may only use the relevant personal information with your consent, for legal claims or where there are other public interest grounds to do so.

Please contact us as stated above if you wish to exercise any of these rights.

Information you have given us about other people:

If you have provided anyone else’s details on this form, please make sure that you have told them that you have given their information to Comhairle nan Eilean Siar. We will only use this information to meet the requirements of the election or referendum. If they want any more information on how we will use their information they can email us at dataprotection@cne-siar.gov.uk

Complaints:

We aim to directly resolve all complaints about how we handle personal information.
However, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office, who can be contacted by post at: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.
By phone on 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745.
Visit their website for more information

More information:

If you do not have access to the internet, you can contact us via telephone to request
hard copies of our documents