Registrars - privacy notice

Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council (the Council) of Town Hall, Crossley Street, Halifax, HX1 1UJ is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) under the provision of the Data Protection Act 2018. The Council takes its duty as Data Controller under the Data Protection Act and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) very seriously.

Calderdale Registration Service provides a range of statutory and non-statutory services. These services include:

• The registration of Birth, Deaths & Marriages
• Undertaking Civil Marriages & Civil Partnerships
• Citizenship Ceremonies

We also issue birth, death, marriage, and civil partnership certificates registered between 1837 to the present day, for events the took place in the Calderdale area.

Types of personal information collected.

The following information will be collected:

• Name
• Date of birth
• Date of death
• Date of marriage/civil partnership
• Place of birth
• Address
• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Nationality
• Occupation
• Name and occupation of parents
• Name of spouse
• Contact details (email and phone numbers)
• Cause of death and medical conditions contributing to this

Most of this information is provided by you, however we may also receive information directly from hospitals, GP surgeries, the Home Office and the coroner’s office.

Why we hold and collect this information.

We use this personal data to:

• Comply with the legal requirements to register Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Civil Partnerships and to carry out Citizenship ceremonies;
• Comply with the requirements to verify a person is legally permitted to marry, or form a civil partnership, in this country;
• Enable us to carry out specific functions from which we are responsible for;
• Provide you with the service you have requested, for example providing a Birth, Death, Marriage or Civil Partnership certificate;
• Assess the quality of our service;
• Evaluate and improve our performance;
• Derive statistics which inform decisions about future delivery of services.

A copy of any register entry will be provided to any applicant provided that they supply enough information to identify the entry concerned and pay the appropriate fee. The copy may only be issued in the form of a paper certified copy (a “certificate”). An application for a certificate may be made to either the Local Register Office or to the General Register Office.

The information you provide will be held and processed by registration officers for this registration district. The superintendent registrar is a data controller for birth, marriage and death registrations and can be contacted by writing to Calderdale Register Office, Spring Hall, Huddersfield Road, Halifax, HX3 0AQ.

The local authority is a data controller for civil partnership registrations and can be contacted at The Town Hall, Crossley Street, Halifax, HX1 1UJ.

The Registrar General for England and Wales is a joint data controller for birth, death, marriage, and civil partnership registrations and can be contacted at the General Register Office, Trafalgar Road, Southport, PR8 2HH. 

Sharing your personal data

We may share the information we have collected about you where it is necessary, lawful, and fair to do so. In each case we will only share the minimum amount of information, only when required, for the following reasons:

• Statistical or research purposes ;
• Administrative purposes by official bodies, for example ‘Tell Us Once’ ensuring records are up-to-date in order to provide services to the public;
• Fraud prevention or detection, immigration, and passport purposes.
• For sending appointment reminders via SMS/Text messaging

Please see below a list of the organisations with whom registration data is shared.

• The General Register Office
• Other Register Offices
• Local Authorities
• Gov Notify (for sending appointment reminders)
• Tell Us Once
• Other government departments including but not limited to Department of Education, Health and Social Care, Her Majesty’s Passport Office.

Retaining your personal Information

Your information is safely stored in locked vaults, drawers and filing cabinets and password protected secure databases. Registration information is retained indefinitely as required by law. 

The retention periods for specific documents are outlined below:

• marriage notices – 5 years
• superintendent registrar’s certificates and certificates and licences for marriage – 5 years from date of marriage

Counterfoils of certificates and forms:

• standard certificates of birth, marriage, death and still-birth – 3 years
• certificates of registration of births and still births – 5 years

Certificates for disposal:

• before or after registration of death – 5 years
• still-births – 5 years

Citizenship attendance records:

• Digital based attendance records – 18 months
• Paper based records from the Home Office – 18 months

Appointment booking records:

• Including appointments for the registration of births, deaths, marriages, civil partnerships, renewal of vows, citizenship and naming ceremonies – 18 months

Routine correspondence:

• relating to registration of births, marriages and deaths, correction of errors, birth re-registrations not made and irregular burials – 5 years
• relating to false information given to registration officers, falsification and forgery of certificates of birth, marriage or death: marriage of foreigners and persons divorced abroad – 5 years

The lawful basis for the processing your data

Under Article 6 of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the lawful basis we rely on for processing this information is: 

6(1)(c) We have a legal obligation.

This legal basis is underpinned by acts of legislation that determine what actions can and should be taken by local authorities. The main legislation which governs the collection of registration information is:

• Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953
• Marriage Act 1949
• Civil Partnership Act 2004
• Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002

In order to do this work, we also need to collect some special category data. This is personal data that needs more protection because it is sensitive. Under Article 9 of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the lawful basis we rely on for processing special category information is:

9(2)(g) Reasons of substantial public interest (with a basis in law)

Your rights

The GDPR provides the following rights for individuals. Not all rights are absolute and therefore will only apply in certain circumstances:

1. The right to be informed.
2. The right of access
3. The right to rectification
4. The right to erasure
5. The right to restrict processing.
6. The right to data portability
7. The right to object
8. Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling.

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. Please contact register.office@calderdale.gov.uk if you wish to make a request or want to withdraw your consent.

You have the right to complain to the Data Protection Officer if you feel that your data has not been handled in accordance with the law. The Council’s Data Protection Officer can be contacted at information.management@calderdale.gov.uk

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office at www.ico.org.uk