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Registration Service Privacy Notice

How we use your personal information for the Registration Service

The Council provides services for local communities and the people who live in them. Undertaking this work means that we must collect and use information about the people we provide services to and keep a record of those services. Because we collect and use personal information about individuals we must make sure that they know what we intend to do with their information and who it may be shared with. 

We have summarised in this privacy notice some of the key ways in which we use your personal information for the Registration Service. This information should be read in conjunction with the Council’s corporate privacy notice.

1. Who we are, what we do. 

Personal information collected from you in order to register an event is required by law. 

You may be legally obliged by these acts, and other pieces of legislation, to provide certain pieces of information. If you fail to provide information you are required to give us, you may, amongst other things, be liable to a fine, or we may not be able to provide the service you are applying for, such as a marriage or a civil partnership.

Personal information may also be collected from you if you are making an application to this office, for example for a certificate or to correct information contained on a register entry.

The Superintendent Registrar   is a data controller for birth, marriage and death registrations, and the   Local Authority is a data controller for civil partnership registrations. The Registrar General for England and Wales is a joint data controller for birth, marriage, death and civil partnership registrations. All details can be found below.

RCT Registration Services also offer non-statutory services, such as processing names via Deed Poll, Welsh Government Child Bereavement Payments and Bespoke ceremonies, for example naming ceremonies, and the ‘Tell us once’ system, a service which means that you can tell us when someone dies, and we will inform the other relevant Council departments and Government organisations.

2. What and whose personal information we hold? 

The type of information we collect for Registration purposes include:

  • Date of Birth
  • Date of Death   
  • Gender 
  • Place of Birth 
  • Occupation   
  • Address 
  • Maiden surname 
  • Relationships Information 
  • Marital status 
  • Cause of Death 
  • Date and Place of Marriage including parent's names and occupations
  • Contact details e.g. telephone, email

3. Where does the service get my information from? 

Most information is obtained directly from you. However information can also be obtained form other sources, such as:

  • NHS & Coroner regarding deaths and births
  • General Register Office regarding adoptions / corrections
  • The Home Office regarding illegal workers / sham marriages

The information you provide will be held and processed by registration officers for this registration district. 

4. What we will do with your personal information? 

We will use your information for statutory purposes, for example to register life events such as births, deaths, marriages, civil partnership, still births, information for notices of marriages and civil partnerships.

For the non-statutory services that we offer, your information will be processed depending on the service you require, for example, changing a name via deed poll, providing bespoke ceremonies such as a naming ceremony, providing other council services or government organisation with details of a death via the ‘tell us once’ service.

5. What is the legal basis for the use of this information?  

We will only share information where there is a lawful basis to do so for the following reasons:

  • Statistical or research purposes
  • Administrative purposes by official bodies e.g. ensuring their records are up-to-date in order to provide services to the public
  • Fraud prevention or detection, immigration and passport purposes

The main laws that we are governed by are:

  •   The Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953
  •   The Marriage Act 1949
  •   The Civil Partnership Act 2004

6. Does the service share my personal information with any other organisation? 

Your information will be shared with a 3rd party processor (Stopford), for the purposes of booking an appointment.

A copy of any register entry will be provided by this office in accordance with the law to any applicant, provided 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 also be made to the General Register Office.  

A copy of the information collected by a registration officer will also be sent to the Registrar General for England and Wales so that a central record of all registrations can be maintained.

Registration information held at this office may be shared with other organisations in the course of carrying out our functions, or to enable others to perform theirs as follows:

Other Council Services:

  •   Council Tax – information regarding deaths
  •   Education  – information regarding births
  •   Electoral Services – information regarding deaths

Other Organisations:

  •   Home Office
  •   General Register office
  •   DWP
  •   Other Local Authorities
  •   Office of National Statistics

7. How long will my information be kept? 

We will not keep your personal information any longer than is necessary and we will only keep your personal information for as long as we need it. The time we keep your information depends on the nature of the information e.g.

  •   Registration information – indefinitely (as required by law)
  •   Marriage notices and Schedules - 5 years

8. Your information, your rights 

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) gives you important rights, including the right to access the personal information the services hold about you.

View further details on your information rights and how to exercise them.

9. Contact us 

If you have any concerns or would like to know more about how the service using your personal information please contact us in one of the following ways:

The Council:

By email : registrar@rctcbc.gov.uk

By telephone : 01443 494024

In writing: The Register Office, Municipal Buildings, Gelliwastad Road, Pontypridd, CF37 2DP

The General Register Office:

By telephone: 0300 123 1837

In writing: The General Register Office, Trafalgar Road, Southport, PR8 2HH