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Supporting Victims Privacy Notice and cookies

This Privacy Notice and cookies policy sets out how Supporting Victims uses and protects your data generally and any information that you give us when you use this website.

The York and North Yorkshire Office for Policing, Fire, Crime and Commissioning which is part of the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority is committed to protecting your personal information.

This Privacy Notice contains important information about what personal details are collected; what is done with that information; who it may be shared with and why; how long your information will be kept and your choices and rights when it comes to the personal information you have given.

We may need to make changes to our Privacy Notice, so please check our website for updates from time to time. If there are important changes such as changes to where your personal data will be processed, we will contact you to let you know

This version of our Privacy Policy was last updated on 4 June 2024.

Who are we?

This Privacy Notice is provided to you by the Supporting Victims Team who are employed by the York and North Yorkshire Office for Policing, Fire, Crime and Commissioning (OPFCC).  The OPFCC is in turn part of the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority under the leadership of a Mayor.

Supporting Victims provide support for anyone affected by crime, whether reported or not including victims, bereaved relatives, parents or guardians of victims, and those under 18 with consent where possible, and members of staff where a business has been a victim of crime. A range of practical and emotional support options are provided and where necessary, help can be provided in relation to accessing support provided by other organisations.

Your personal data – what is it?

“Personal data” is any information about a living individual which allows them to be identified from that data (for example a name, photographs, videos, email address, or address). Identification can be directly using the data itself or by combining it with other information which helps to identify a living individual (e.g. a list of staff may contain personnel ID numbers rather than names but if you use a separate list of the ID numbers which give the corresponding names to identify the staff in the first list then the first list will also be treated as personal data).

The processing of personal data is governed by legislation relating to personal data which applies in the United Kingdom including the General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR) and other legislation relating to personal data and rights such as the Human Rights Act.

Why we will hold your information and what we would do with it

We process personal information to:

  • Enable us to provide emotional support, practical assistance and advice to victims of crime in line with the Code of Practice for Victims of Crime;
  • Enable us to make referrals (with consent where appropriate) to specialist support services for victims of crime, including independent domestic violence advisers, independent victim adviser services, restorative justice services and counselling services;
  • Enable us to measure the progress made by victims who are being supported to deliver continuous improvement and further investment in services to support victims
  • Conduct research into matters affecting victims, such as, where victims have been a victim of a hate crime. This will include all information associated with the incident.
  • Ensure victim feedback on services is captured and used to support continuous improvement
  • Support and manage our employees and volunteers
  • Ensure that we are culturally aware of different need in order to support considerations in relation to the provision of support to meet specialist need. i.e. provision of a male/female counsellor, delivering support in appropriate locations, providing support at appropriate times to fit caring responsibilities, or in a different language if English is not your first language in accordance with need and preference.

The data we may collect about you

In order to meet our obligations, we may need to collect and process personal data about you in order to provide the most appropriate support to help you cope and recover from the impact of crime and monitor service accessibility and quality. The type of data that may be collected by Supporting Victims includes:

  • Name
  • Contact details such as email address, postal address and telephone number
  • Gender, Sexual Orientation, Ethnicity, Religion, Disability
  • Marital Status where appropriate
  • Date of Birth/Age
  • Family details including their relationship with you where appropriate
  • Details of other agencies with whom you may already be in contact with, where appropriate
  • Details of the incident which has led to your need for assistance from Supporting Victims. This may include elements of ‘Special Categories of Data’ as described below.

In some circumstances, the OPFCC may need to obtain ‘Special Categories of personal Data’ which attracts additional protection under the GDPR. These Special Categories may include information about any past history with North Yorkshire Police and aspects around your health.

What is the legal basis for processing your personal data?

Supporting Victims may process for personal data for a number of reasons. For example, it may be processed for the following lawful reasons:

  • Personal data may be processed under the basis of performing a ‘public task’ and which are in the substantial public interest. Processing in this way has a clear basis in law as Supporting Victims provides services under the Code of Practice for Victims of Crime which was issued under the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004. ‘Where explicit consent has been provided by the individual the personal information is about.
  • There is a legal obligation on Supporting Victims
  • Very occasionally, the reason for processing the information will be that it is in the vital interests of an individual. For example, in order to keep the individual safe from harm. Wherever possible in these circumstances ,the reason for processing would be explained to you.

Further information in relation to the use of consent can be found here.

The OPFCC will comply with data protection law. This says that the personal data we hold about you must be:

  • Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
  • Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
  • Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
  • Accurate and kept up to date.
  • Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
  • Kept and destroyed securely including ensuring that appropriate technical and security measures are in place to protect your personal data to protect personal data from loss, misuse, unauthorised access and disclosure.

Sharing your personal data

Supporting Victims will normally only share your personal information with another agency/organisation with the explicit consent of the individual concerned. A list of the agencies we work with to provide support is available here.

At times, there will be circumstances were Supporting Victims may need to disclose information without the individual’s consent. These are:

  • Where there is an obligation on Supporting Victims to report the matter to North Yorkshire Police either because there is a legal obligation to do so, or because it is in your vital interests. Examples include:
    • Issues relating to child protection or adult safeguarding where there is a belief that you or someone else is at risk of significant harm
  • Information submitted to Supporting Victim’s directly, such as through the use of the Hate Crime form which leads to a belief that you or someone else is at risk of significant harm Any other legal reason or requirement to disclosure your personal information.

Aside from the agencies/organisations we work with to provide services, we may share personal information with the following organisations.

  • Criminal Justice agencies that can also help support the individual in relation to being a victim, such as North Yorkshire Police and the Crown Prosecution Service.
  • Other statutory agencies that also provide support such as Local Authority Agencies and the National Health Services agencies.
  • Voluntary sector and third sector partner agencies, including PCC Specialist commissioned support services, who may be able to assist in providing support to victims to cope and recover.

How long do we keep your personal data?

Personal Data is kept in kept in line with the OPFCC’s retention policy which is available here

How do we keep your information secure

We are committed to ensuring that your personal data is safe. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information that we hold about you. These include:

  • Secure work areas
  • Information security awareness for our staff
  • Access controls on all systems
  • Encryption of personal data
  • Testing, assessing and evaluating the effectiveness of technical security controls

Your rights and your personal data

You have the following rights in relation to your personal data:

  • Right to be informed
  • Right to Access
  • Right to Request Rectification
  • Right to Erasure
  • Right to Restrict Processing
  • Right to Data Portability
  • Right to Object
  • Rights Relating to Automated Decision Making

Further information about these rights and how you can exercise them can be found here.

Further processing

If we wish to use your personal data for a new purpose, not covered by this Privacy Notice, then we will provide you with a new notice explaining this new use prior to commencing the processing and setting out the relevant purposes and processing conditions. Where and whenever necessary, we will seek your prior consent to the new processing.

Changes to this notice

We keep this Privacy Notice under regular review and we will place any updates on the this website.

Contact Details

You can contact the Data Protection Officer in relation to any issues you have with the processing of your personal information, including exercising any of your rights or making a complaint.

E-mail:
[email protected]

By post:
Data Protection Officer
York and North Yorkshire Office for Policing, Fire, Crime and Commissioning
Harrogate Police Station
Beckwith Head Road
Harrogate
HG3 1FR

By phone:
01423 569 562

Your right to complain

If you are concerned about the way we have handled your information you have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner.
The Information Commissioners Office can be contacted via the following ways:

By phone:
Opening hours are Monday to Friday 09:00-17:00
 0303 123 1113

By email:
[email protected]

By post:
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5A

How we use cookies

Cookies are small text files which are served to your browser for your computers to store.

We use cookies to:

  • Improve your browsing experience (eg. saving customisation settings)
  • Enabling certain functionality (eg. logging in)
  • Collect anonymous data to improve the website (eg. device/browser usage, page visit routes)

Knowing how our users visit and use our website is how we know where to improve. We do not use cookies for advertising purposes, or pass user data to any other organisation or website.

All cookies used on this site are listed below. If you do not wish these cookies to be tracked you can disable them in your browser, but there is a possibility that this may negatively affect your experience whilst using the website.

First party cookies

These are cookies that may be controlled and set by us on this domain, used to provide site functionality and optimisation.

Name Purpose
resolution Set and used by Adaptive Images to serve appropriately sized images to your device
wordpress_test_cookie Set and used by WordPress to test for cookie capability
comment_author, comment_author_email Set and used by WordPress to remember a commenting user’s data
wp-settings, wp-settings-time Set and used by WordPress to remember a logged-in user’s preferences

Third party cookies

These are cookies that may be controlled and set by external services / tools, used to enhance our site and provide usage information.

Name Purpose
__utma, __utmb, __utmc, __utmv, __utmz Set and used by Google Analytics to anonymously track user activity
NREUM, NRAGENT, JSESSIONID Set and used by New Relic to anonymously track user activity
khcookie, NID, SNID and PREF Set and used by Google Maps to provide interactive location maps
APISID, HSID, NID, PREF, SSID, SID, SAPISID Set and used by Google Site Search to provide search functionality

Form data

We may collect the following information from any of the site’s input forms:

  • Your full name
  • Contact information including email address and telephone (if supplied)

Security

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. To prevent unauthorised access or disclosure we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide while visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

Controlling your personal information

You may request details of personal information which we hold about you under The Data Protection Act 2018. A small fee may be payable. If you would like a copy of the information held on you please e-mail [email protected].

If you believe that any information we are holding on you is incorrect or incomplete, please contact us as soon as possibles. We will promptly correct any information found to be incorrect.