Consultation outcome

Privacy information notice

Updated 13 February 2024

This was published under the 2022 to 2024 Sunak Conservative government

Applies to England

Introduction

The Cites and Local Government Devolution Act 2016 amended the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 to enable Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) functions to be transferred to combined authority mayors, creating one directly elected leader accountable for both combined authority and PCC functions. The Government’s ambition to have combined authority mayors take on the PCC role, where feasible was further cemented through the findings of Part One of the government’s Review into the role of PCCs and the Levelling Up White Paper.

The Mayor of the West Midlands and that of South Yorkshire wrote to the Home Secretary to express an interest in seeing whether it is feasible to transfer the PCC functions to the mayoralties in those areas.

The Home Secretary is therefore gathering the views of the those who live or work in the West Midlands Combined Authority and/or South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority through a consultation exercise, so that they can make a decision on whether to transfer the PCC functions to be exercised by the Mayor from the point of the next mayoral election. Comments from outside these areas are also welcome.

This is a public consultation which will run for 6 weeks from 20 December 2023 until 31 January 2024.

Privacy Notice

Your personal information, supplied for the purposes of the consultation, will be held and processed by the Home Office (2 Marsham Street, London SW1P 4DF). The Home Office is the controller of this information.

How and why the Home Office uses your information

The Home Office collects, processes and shares personal information to enable it to carry out its statutory and other functions.

The Home Office is only allowed to process your data where there is a lawful basis for doing so.

In this case, the legal basis for the Home Office processing personal data is set out in Article 6(1)(c) and (e) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Article 6(1)(c) permits the Home Office to process personal data where this is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which it is subject. Article 6(1)(e) permits the Home Office to process personal data where this is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority.

We will be collating and analysing the responses. This will help us understand how views differ across different groups. The Home Secretary will take into account the responses to the consultation when making a decision as to whether to transfer the PCC functions to the aforementioned mayoralties. Opinions will not be attributed to individuals, and all findings will be anonymised unless we are directed otherwise by the respondent.

More information about the ways in which the Home Office may use your personal information, including the purposes for which we use it and the legal basis, can be found on the Personal information charter page. 

Personal data we are collecting and how it will be used for the purposes of this consultation.

We have asked respondents to the consultation to voluntarily provide the following information:

• Job title or capacity in which the respondent is submitting a response to this consultation exercise
• Company name/organisation (if applicable)
• Address and postcode, in order to ascertain whether respondents live and/or work in either of the two mayoral/police force areas
• If the responded is a representative of a group, the name of the group and give a summary of the people or organisations the individual represents
• Responses to the questions set out in the consultation document, through multiple choice questions and free text boxes

It should be noted that if in individual responds to the consultation via email, we will also have collected their email address.

Data will be viewed and processed by the consultation team, made up of Home Office officials.

The data we have asked respondents to voluntarily provide will be used to understand if there are significant differences between types of respondents. Some respondents may provide information in their responses which could identify them. We may illustrate findings through quotes provided to the consultation. We will ensure these are anonymised and do not include any personally identifiable information, unless an organisation or individual tells us they are content for their response to be made public. It should be noted that regardless of the steps being taken by the data controller to anonymise the responses, when taken together, the voluntarily provided data and quotes may allow the responded to be identified.

The Home Office will process your personal data in accordance with the DPA 2018 and in the majority of circumstances, this will mean that your personal data will not be disclosed to third parties, nor will we send your personal data overseas.

Instances in which your data may be shared

Information provided in response to this consultation, including personal information, may be published or disclosed in accordance with the access to information regimes (these are primarily the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA), the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004).

If you want the information that you provide to be treated as confidential, please be aware that, under the FOIA, there is a statutory Code of Practice with which public authorities must comply and which deals, amongst other things, with obligations of confidence. In view of this it would be helpful if you could explain to us why you regard the information you have provided as confidential. If we receive a request for disclosure of the information we will take full account of your explanation, but we cannot give an assurance that confidentiality can be maintained in all circumstances. An automatic confidentiality disclaimer generated by your IT system will not, of itself, be regarded as binding on the Home Office.

What we will not do          

We will not publish email addresses, or any personal information inadvertently provided in the free text responses, unless we have the explicit direction of the respondent to do so or it is required for the purposes outlined in the above section.

Your personal data will not be used for any automated decision making.

Retention of personal data

We will not keep personal data any longer than is necessary for the purpose for which they are being processed. Your personal data in response to this consultation will be held on a secure IT system, within a dedicated inbox and then the Home Office SharePoint space for a maximum of 5 years before being deleted or securely destroyed, in line with departmental retention policy. More details of this policy can be found on the personal information charter page.

Requesting access to your personal data

You have the right to request access to the personal information the Home Office holds about you. Details of how to make the request can be found on the personal information charter page. 

Please note, however, posted and online consultation responses may not always be identifiable as personal data are provided only on a voluntary basis. Where a data access request for a posted or online response is received and is identifiable this will be processed as any other request for access to personal data. Where the response is not identifiable you will receive a response stating this.

Other rights

Because we are processing your personal data under the legal basis of a public task, you have the following rights:

To object to and restrict the use of your personal information, or to ask to have your data corrected. If you want the information that you provide to be treated as confidential, please be aware that, under the FOIA, there is a statutory Code of Practice with which public authorities must comply and which deals, amongst other things, with obligations of confidence. In view of this it would be helpful if you could explain to us why you regard the information you have provided as confidential. If we receive a request for disclosure of the information we will take full account of your explanation, but we cannot give an assurance that confidentiality can be maintained in all circumstances. An automatic confidentiality disclaimer generated by your IT system will not, of itself, be regarded as binding on the Home Office.

To contact the Home Office’s Data Protection Officer (DPO) if you have questions or concerns about how we are processing your personal data.

Please note that personal data once anonymised ceases to be captured by the terms of the data protection act and consequently data rights are no longer deliverable.

Reporting a concern

Concerns or queries in the first instance should be reported to the following contacts:

For queries regarding the South Yorkshire consultation: sypcctransferconsultation@homeoffice.gov.uk

For queries regarding the West Midlands consultation: wmpcctransferconsultation@homeoffice.gov.uk

Further issues can be reported to the following contacts:

Email: dpo@homeoffice.gov.uk  

Telephone: 020 7035 6999

Or write to:

Office of the DPO
Home Office
Peel Building
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF

When we process your information, we will comply with the law, including data protection legislation. Should you feel that your data is being processed in breach of data protection law or other legislation, you can report your concern to our Data Protection Officer using the contact details provided above, or contact the
Information Commissioner’s Office at:

Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Telephone: 08456 30 60 60 or 01625 54 57 45.

Fax: 01625 524510

You can also visit the Information Commissioner’s Office website.

Questions or concerns about personal data

If you have any further questions or concerns about the collection, use or disclosure of your personal information please see the Home Office’s personal information charter.