Markets Privacy Notice

Lancaster City Council is responsible for managing the Festival Market, Morecambe; the Assembly Rooms Emporium, Lancaster; and the Charter Market in Lancaster.  We also manage various concessionary (street trading) pitches in Lancaster City centre. We facilitate the use of these spaces by traders & concessionaires, ensure such use is carried out safely and appropriately, and take payments for this where necessary.

In order to carry out these functions, we need to collect, process and store personal information. We are committed to protecting your privacy, and this notice 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 may collect personal information about you if you are a trader or concessionaire, if you are a driver for a coach party visiting the Festival Market, or if you are a member of the public attending one of the markets.

Traders & concessionaires

We collect information (including some personal information) from you when you make an application to trade on one of the markets or concessionary pitches. We also collect information about you and your stall as you continue to trade with us to ensure that standards on the markets and concessionary pitches are maintained.

We may sometimes obtain information about you from third parties, including:

• Public liability insurance providers,
• Other market operators (to help assess your suitability to trade with us), and
• Customers, other traders or members of the public who comment or complain about you.

In order to make enquiries about the above we may sometimes have to share basic information about you with these third parties.

Coach drivers

We collect personal information from you when you complete a driver details form to claim a hospitality voucher.

Members of the public

We collect personal information from you when you report lost property, make a complaint or comment about the markets/concessionary traders, or contact us about the market for any other reason.

What personal information do we collect?

When you apply to trade with us, we require the following information:

• Full name,
• Contact details (phone, email and correspondence address),
• Date of birth, NI number and proof of ID (to comply with National Fraud Initiative requirements),
• Details of public liability insurance provider,
• Information about other people who will be operating your stall,
• Card details if you pay fees by card (these details are not retained),
• Second hand dealers licence details (if applicable),
• Details of food hygiene experience and certificates (if applicable),
• Details of health issues that may be relevant,
• References from other markets on which you have traded (if applicable).

From visiting coach party drivers, we collect:

• Your name and contact details,
• Details of the company you work for,
• Vehicle registration number,
• Details of your visit.

From customers logging lost property or making a complaint we require the following information:

• Full name and contact details (phone, email and/or correspondence address)
• Details of complaint or property lost/found,

How do we use your personal information?

We use your information for the following purposes:

Traders & concessionaires

• To manage stall allocations and to facilitate payment for market stalls,
• To ensure that standards on the markets/concessionary pitches are maintained (including the market rules, street trading terms & conditions, and health & safety legislation),
• To fulfil our duties as a Licensing Authority,
• To ensure people are safe in public areas managed by the council.

The above processing is part of our public task as a Local Authority, and – where applicable – is also necessary to fulfil our obligations under any contract we have made with you.

All the information on your file is maintained for the duration of the time you trade with us, and for a further 12 months after you cease trading, in case we need to refer to it in future. In some cases, financial information (including copies of invoices and records of payments) is kept for up to 7 years for legal and regulatory reasons.

Coach drivers

• To assess the effectiveness of the scheme
• To contact you if a passenger needs to get in touch with their party.

We retain this information for 3 years after your visit.

Members of the public

• To contact you about your comment or complaint
• To contact you and/or to return missing property.

We consider any complaints to have been made in confidence and will never disclose your identity to someone you have complained about. However, in some cases it will not be possible to effectively investigate your complaint without disclosing information which may enable the trader to identify you. Where this is the case, we will let you know and allow you the opportunity to withdraw your complaint.

If you report missing property, we will retain your details for as long as necessary to enable your property to be returned to you. If you make a comment or complaint about a market trader, this is retained as long as we retain details on the market trader (see above)

Do we share your information with anyone else?

We share your information with other organisations, including:

• Other markets, if they contact us for references.
• Trading Standards, should there be an issue with a complaint.

If you owe us money, we will always try to contact you first to make an informal 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 debt collection agencies to recover any money owed.

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 see National Fraud Initiative.

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: www.lancaster.gov.uk/markets-privacy.

 

This version: v3, February 2024