Parking privacy notice

Lancaster City Council is responsible for the management of 61 car parks and 4,075 parking spaces in Lancaster, Morecambe and Heysham. Parking operations include day-to-day management, maintenance, enforcing parking regulations, administering parking charges, issuing car parking permits, dealing with unauthorised use of car parks and general enquiries.

In order to provide the above services, the Council is required to collect and process personal data and we are committed to protecting your privacy in accordance with the Data Protection Act and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

When do we collect personal information?

We will collect personal information when you request one of the above services. This could be in the form of an email, a letter, a telephone call, completing a form or visiting our Customer Services Team at Lancaster or Morecambe town halls. We will collect a vehicle registration number when a parking contravention takes place, so that a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) can be issued.  

Who collects the personal information?

The council will collect some of the personal information for the provision of the above services.

The council also uses a number of contractors to provide optional and support services and these include:

• Lancashire Parking Services (LPS) – LPS are part of Lancashire County Council and provide support services for processing PCNs through the statutory enforcement process. For more information, please see LPS's privacy notice.
• RingGo – our optional cashless parking service is provided by Cobalt Telephone Technologies Ltd and is branded RingGo. For more information, please see RingGo's Terms and Conditions and RingGo's privacy notice.

What personal information do we collect?

We will collect names, addresses, telephone numbers, vehicle registration numbers, vehicle makes, models and colours, Blue Badge serial numbers and expiry dates, and bank account details for direct debit mandates. Details of credit and debit card payments made over the phone will not be retained in accordance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)

How do we use your personal information?

The above information will be collected to allow the council to provide specific car parking services and for the effective management of its car parks. In terms of car parking enforcement, the council has a legal obligation to enforce its parking regulations in accordance with the Traffic Management Act 2004 and Civil Parking Enforcement Statutory Guidance. We will not use your personal information for any other purposes such as marketing but reserve the right to use it for fraud investigations and for the prevention and detection of crime.

Do we share your personal information with anyone else?

For parking enforcement, we will securely share information with the DVLA, the Traffic Enforcement Centre, the Traffic Penalty Tribunal (TPT) and the council’s appointed bailiff company for the purposes of administering and processing PCNs, in accordance with the council’s legal obligations and for the recovery of unpaid PCNs.

We will share information for the investigation of fraud and for the prevention and detection of crime.

We will not share your information with any other organisations unless required to do so by law.

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 this web page

This Version: v2, February 2024

Last updated: 26 February 2024