Viscounts Privacy Notice

Viscount’s Department Privacy Notice (Fair Processing Notice)

The Viscount’s Department is registered as a ‘Controller’ under the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018 as we collect and process personal information about you. We process and hold your information in order to provide public services and meet our statutory obligations and obligations arising under orders of the Jersey Courts. This notice explains how we use and share your information. Information may be collected on a paper or online form, by telephone, email, letter or by a member of our staff, or in some cases, by another States department, public authority or authorised agent appointed by the Viscount.

We will continually review and update this privacy notice to reflect changes in our services and feedback from service users, as well as to comply with changes in the law.

How will we use the information about you?

We will use the information you provide in a manner that conforms to the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018.

We will endeavour to keep your information accurate and up to date and not keep it for longer than is necessary. In some instances, the law sets the length of time information has to be kept. Please ask to see our retention schedules for more detail about how long we retain your information. 

We may not be able to provide you with a service unless we have enough information or your permission to use that information.

We may pass personal data to organisations that process information on our behalf, and we will only do so, where possible, after we have ensured that sufficient steps have been taken by the processor to protect your personal data. We do not process your information overseas using web services that are hosted outside the European Economic Area. 

We will not disclose information that you provide ‘in confidence’ without your permission, except in situations where disclosure is required by law, to enable us to fulfil our functions or duties or  to comply with a legal requirement or where we have good reason to believe that failing to share the information would be contrary to the public interest,  including where it would put someone else at risk. You will be told about this unless there are exceptional or legal reasons not to do so.

Data Sharing

We may need to pass your information to other organisations, including the Courts or a department within the Government of Jersey to fulfil your request for a service or to enable us to comply with legal requirements. These organisations are obliged to keep your details securely, and only use your information for the purposes of processing your (or our) service request.

We may disclose information to other third parties where it is necessary, either to enable us to provide a service or to comply with a legal obligation, or where permitted under other legislation. Examples of this include but are not limited to where the disclosure is necessary for the purposes of the prevention and/or detection of crime; for the purposes of meeting statutory obligations or other legal requirements; or to prevent risk of harm to an individual.

At no time will your information be passed to organisations for marketing or sales purposes or for any commercial use without your prior express consent.

Publication of your information

We may need to publish your information on our website and/or in the Jersey Gazette for the following reasons:

• Where we are required by law to publicise certain information, for example, notices relating to insolvency procedures or relating to the sale of assets belonging to you (by distraint).
• In the interests of demonstrating a fair and transparent decision-making process, for example, notices of debt remission orders or other notices to creditors.
• Where we are required to provide statistical information about a group of people, although your data will be anonymised to protect your identity.
• Where you have responded to a public consultation, although your comments will be anonymised to protect your identity, unless you have agreed otherwise.

We will not publish any of your sensitive personal information unless there is a requirement for us to do so in order to carry out our statutory functions or an order of the Jersey court.

Emails

If you email us, we may keep a record of your email address and a copy of the email for record keeping purposes and to enable us to contact you by email.

For security reasons it is our aim not to include any confidential information about you in any email we send to you. We would also suggest that you keep the amount of confidential information you send to us via email to a minimum or use our secure online services where possible or correspond with us by post.

We will not share your email address or your email contents unless is it necessary for us to do so; either to fulfil your request for a service; to comply with a legal obligation, or where permitted under other legislation. 

Telephone calls

We do not record or monitor any telephone calls you make to us using recording equipment, although if you leave a message on our voicemail systems your message will be kept until we are able to return your call or make a note of your message. File notes of when and why you called may be taken for record keeping purposes. We will not pass on the content of your telephone calls, unless is it necessary for us to do so; either to fulfil your request for a service; to comply with a legal obligation, or where permitted under other legislation.

CCTV

Closed circuit television is in operation in some of the Viscount’s Department. These are in operation primarily for the protection of members of the public and employees and for prevention and detection of crime. There are strict controls around the use and access of CCTV images. CCTV does not capture audio, and images are retained for a short period before being deleted.

In areas where CCTV is in operation, there are visible signs in place.

Your Rights

Complaints