Waste and Recycling Privacy Notice
Lancaster City Council provides both domestic and trade waste and recycling services across the district. Domestic waste collections cover approximately 67,000 properties and every property will be visited each week, for either a recycling or residual collection. For trade waste this service includes both regular and ad hoc collections, via sacks and/or bins, and involves maintenance of stock, administering charges, debt management and ensuring compliance with Section 34 Environmental Protection Act 1990 (EPA) and the Waste (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2014, Transfer of waste - Regulation 35 and The Controlled Waste Regulations 2012.
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?
We collect your information from you directly by asking you to complete one of our online forms or if you telephone us or our customer service centre.
We may also inadvertently collect images of you through use of CCTV cameras which are fixed onto our waste collection vehicles. These images are only collected for the purpose of Health and Safety, insurance, and other legal matters and to monitor whether bins have been presented.
What personal information do we collect?
The data we need to collect to provide you with the majority of our waste and recycling services includes your name, address, telephone number and e-mail address.
In specific circumstances we also collect financial details to allow payment for applicable services (e.g. trade waste, special collections) and information about the number of people in your household (e.g. in order to receive a larger capacity bin – for this we may also collect occupants’ Dates of Birth).
Special category personal information, such as health data, may be required for assisted and/or clinical waste collections or in order to receive a larger capacity bin.
How do we use your personal information?
The Council does not need, and does not use, information about you for routine bin collections. Information about you will only be used if you:
- report a missed collection
- order new, additional or replacement waste and recycling containers
- report missing or damaged containers
- request a collection of a bulky item
- apply for an assisted collection
- request our trade waste disposal and recycling services
- make a general service enquiry, comment or complaint
Or require any services provided by the Waste Management Team
Do we share your information with anyone else?
We sometimes need to share your information within the Council, the Waste disposal Authority or with other organisations. We will only share your information when necessary and when the law allows us to, and we will only share the minimum information we need to.
In certain cases, we may also share your information with other individuals and organisations, e.g. if you make a complaint to your Councillor and you have given them with written consent to act on your behalf.
Sometimes it may be necessary to share your information without your permission, e.g. for the detection or prevention of crime or if the sharing would help with a safeguarding issue. Please be assured that the Council will never sell your information to anyone else.
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 our website at this address.
This Version: v1.0 – January 2024
Last updated: 18 January 2024