Lancaster City Council Payments Privacy Notice

This privacy notice relates to Lancaster City Council’s payments, and provides additional information that specifically relates to this particular service. It should be read together with the Lancaster City Council privacy statement, which provides more detail.

This privacy notice is designed to help you understand how and why we use your information if you are making a payment to us or if we are making a payment to you.  This includes:

• Making payments to Lancaster City Council - This could be a statutory payment (eg council tax), a payment for a service we have provided, or because of an overpayment that has been made. We require your information in order to collect the related payment. 
• Receiving payments from Lancaster City Council - This may be people who have supplied us with goods or services which we will pay for on receipt of a valid invoice or those due a refund having made an overpayment to us. If we are not supplied with the information, we may not be able to make payments to you.

We are committed to protecting your privacy, and this statement is made in light of the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation 2016 and the Data Protection Act 2018 in order to advise you how we use your personal information.

When do we collect personal information?

Making Payments to Lancaster City Council

We collect data from you in respect of statutory payments (eg council tax and non-domestic rates) and whenever you sign up to use a service we are providing. Depending upon the type of payment concerned this date may be collected via one of the following methods:

• From the Lancaster City Council website payments section
• Over the telephone either using the Automated Telephone Payment line or by speaking to a council employee
• Face to face at one of our Customer Service Centres or sales outlets
• By completing a Direct Debit Mandate
• From the Lancaster and Morecambe Visitor information Centre TicketBox*
• The Platform and Salt Ayre Leisure Centre website when booking tickets*

*These use a 3rd party website called PatronBase that manages all ticket booking. PatronBase’s privacy notice can be found here.

Receiving Payments from Lancaster City Council

It is necessary for the council to collect and process personal information when you are working for us as a consultant, contractor or supplier or when we are considering a contractual relationship with you such as when you submit a tender. Your personal data is collected for the purposes of setting up creditor accounts and making payments in order to carry out our statutory responsibilities.

If we are making a refund to you we will need to collect financial details from you, if we don’t already have them, in order to make the refund.

What personal information do we collect?

Making Payments to Lancaster City Council

Lancaster City Council collects personal information, such as name, address and contact details in order to fulfil our statutory obligations or to fulfil your service request.  We will collect financial details (e.g. bank account details) in order to process card payments or payments made by Direct Debit.

• If you pay by Direct Debit, Lancaster City Council will collect your bank account details including account number and sort code via a Direct Debit Mandate.  Depending upon what you are paying these details may be collected on-line, over the phone to a LCC employee or via a paper mandate.
• If you pay by credit or debit card either on the Lancaster City Council website secure online payments page, via one of our 3^rd party websites (eg PatronBase) or by using the Automated Telephone Payment line, your payment information is securely collected by Civica Payments, a leading provider of secure online payments services to local government. 
• If you pay by PayPal, your payment card information is collected by logging into your PayPal account and is never captured on our website. Your purchase transaction data is stored only as long as is necessary to complete your purchase transaction. PayPal transfers successful payment information into the Council’s Finance system but full payment card information is not available to or accessible by the council. PayPal’s Privacy Notice can be found here.

The council, Civica Payments and PayPal all maintain compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

Receiving payments from Lancaster City Council

Depending on our contract arrangements with you, Services may hold contract information supplied by you.  The council’s financial system will hold personal or business information including your name, address, contact details and bank account details so that payments can be made.

How do we use your personal information?

Processing of your personal data by Lancaster City Council is necessary in order for us to:

• Process a payment from you via one of the methods above.
• Seek payment from you via a demand notice or by raising an invoice and sending it out to recover sundry debts owed to the council.
• Enable the performance of a contract whereby we have agreed to pay for goods or services.
• Maintain our own accounting records.
• Comply with statutory requirements eg VAT returns.
• Help investigate any enquiries or complaints you make about our services or payments made to us.
• Prevent and detect fraud.

We will only keep your personal data for as long as is necessary and we will dispose of it in a secure manner when it is no longer required.

Do we share your information with anyone else?

Making Payments to Lancaster City Council

• If you owe us money, we will always try to contact you first to seek to make an arrangement to pay off any debt. However, where this is unsuccessful, or if you have a history of late payments, we may pass your information onto the council’s debt recovery agencies to recover any money owed.
• If you pay by credit or debit card your card payment information is processed by our secure card payment provider, Civica. Card details given during telephone calls are not recorded by the council and are entered directly into the Civica Payments system in order to process your card payment. Full payment card information is not stored against transactions in any of the Council’s systems and is not accessible by the council.
• If you pay by PayPal your credit card information is sent directly to and processed by PayPal and is never captured on our website.
• If you pay by Direct Debit information from bank mandates is stored in the council system relating to the type of payment you’re making (eg the council tax system or the sundry debtors system) and is shared with the banks and Banks Automated Clearing Service (BACS) in order to process the direct debits. Paper mandates are sent to the bank via the postal service.  Electronic mandate submissions are transmitted securely to the Banks Automated Clearing Service (BACS).

Receiving payments from Lancaster City Council

• Invoices for goods and services are processed by the city council. Your bank details will be submitted to the banks as needed in order for a payment to be made. All transmissions to the banks are via standard secure banking routes (eg Banks Automated Clearing Service (BACS))
• Under Regulation 113 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 performance data of payments made to creditors are published on the Lancaster City Council website. When we do so, we remove any personal information that may identify you as an individual or organisation and only use and share anonymous statistics. You can find out more about payment of supplier invoices here.

Your personal details will be safeguarded and will not be divulged to any other individuals or organisations for any other purposes unless required to do so by law.

We participate in the Cabinet Office’s National Fraud Initiative, a data matching exercise to assist in the prevention and detection of fraud. We are required to provide particular sets of data to the Minister for the Cabinet Office for matching for each exercise. This data may then be passed on to other public bodies to investigate any matches. For more information on the National Fraud Initiative please see here.

Your rights and how to find out more

You have a number of rights under data protection law, including the right to ask for a copy of the information we hold about you, and the right to object to our use of your information in certain circumstances.

For further information about your rights, how the council uses your information, and how to get in touch if you have a query or complaint, please see the council’s main privacy notice.

We reserve the right to amend this privacy notice at any time. However, we take your privacy very seriously and will never change our policies or practices to make them less protective of your personal information. 

If we make any changes to this policy that significantly affect you, we will aim to notify you directly if we hold contact details for you. You will always be able to find the most up-to-date version of this policy on our website at this address: www.lancaster.gov.uk/privacy-payments.

This Version: v1, July 2018

Last updated: 06 October 2023