Business rates privacy notice

In order to administer business rates bills and determine for instance eligibility for business rates reliefs, we may require personal information relevant to your non-domestic property.

We may also use your information, as required, to verify your identity, contact you by post, email or telephone and to maintain our records.

In order to increase transparency around the use of public funds for non-domestic rates relief awards, information associated with the awarding of non-domestic rates relief has been published on our website.

Reduction in business rates: List of relief recipients

This information may include:

• the liability holder (company or sole trader name)
• non-domestic property information, including relevant property reference numbers
• the date of the relief award
• type of relief award
• gross bill and net bill

This information may also be analysed internally to help us improve our services.

Privacy statement

This data sharing is in accordance with our Information Use and Privacy Policy and covered in our full  privacy statement.

It also forms part of our requirements in line with our Records Management Plan approved in terms of the Public Records (Scotland) Act 2011.

Processing your personal information may be necessary for the awarding of the relief. If you do not provide us with the information we have asked for then we may not be able to provide this service to you.

You can find more details about this in our privacy statement.

We are legally obliged to safeguard public funds so we are required to verify and check your details internally for fraud prevention.

We may share this information with other public bodies, and also receive information from these other bodies, for fraud-checking purposes. We are also legally obliged to share certain data with other public bodies, such as other local authorities or His Majesty's Revenue and Customs and will do so where the law requires this.

In order to meet our legal obligations and to promote openness and transparency around the use of public funds and the awarding of non-domestic rates reliefs, relief recipients should be aware that the details of all relief awards has been published on our website.

Reduction in business rates: List of relief recipients

We will also generally comply with requests for specific information from other regulatory and law enforcement bodies where this is necessary and appropriate.

Your information is also analysed internally to help us improve our services. This data sharing is in accordance with our Information Use and Privacy Policy and covered in our full privacy statement. It also forms part of our requirements in line with our Records Management Plan approved in terms of the Public Records (Scotland) Act 2011.

Your information will be shared with the Scottish Government for the purposes of analysis. This data-sharing is in accordance with our Information Use and Privacy Policy and covered in our full privacy statement.

It also forms part of our requirements in line with our Records Management Plan approved in terms of the Public Records (Scotland) Act 2011. The Scottish Government may also publish compiled lists of relief award recipients.

We only keep your personal information for the minimum period amount of time necessary. Sometimes this time period is set out in the law, but in most cases it is based on the business need.

We maintain a Council approved Corporate Retention Schedule (PDF 814 KB) which explains how long we keep information for.

Access to your information

You have the right to request a copy of the personal information that we hold about you.

Correcting your information

We want to make sure that your personal information is accurate, complete and up to date Therefore you may ask us to correct any personal information about you that you believe does not meet these standards.

Deletion of your information

You have the right to ask us to delete personal information about you and where:

• you think that we no longer need to hold the information for the purposes for which it was originally obtained
• you have a genuine objection to our use of your personal information - refer to 'Objecting to how we may use your information' below
• our use of your personal information is contrary to law or our other legal obligations

Objecting rights

Restricting rights

In some cases, you may ask us to restrict how we use your personal information.

This right might apply:

• where we are checking the accuracy of personal information that we hold about you or we are assessing the objection you have made to our use of your information
• if we no longer have a basis for using your personal information but you don't want us to delete the data

Where this right is realistically applied will mean that we may only use the relevant personal information with your consent, for legal claims or where there are other public interest grounds to do so.

Please contact us as stated above if you wish to exercise any of these rights.

If you have provided anyone else's details on a form, please make sure that you have told them that you have given their information to East Ayrshire Council. We will only use this information to process and administer your claim.

If they want any more information on how we will use their information they can visit our website or email  FOI@east-ayrshire.gov.uk.

We aim to directly resolve all complaints about how we handle personal information.

If your complaint is about how we have handled your personal information, you can contact the Council's Data Protection Officer by email at  FOI@east-ayrshire.gov.uk or telephone  01563 554400.

However, you also have the right to lodge a complaint about data protection matters with the Information Commissioner's Office. Visit their website at  Information Commissioner's Office: Make a complaint.