Statement of Intent
From time
to time, you will be asked to submit personal information about yourself (eg name and email address
etc) in order to receive or use services on our website. Occasionally, you may be asked to provide us
with information regarding your personal, professional interests and more detailed personal information.
By
entering your details in the fields requested, you enable DRD (Roads Service) to provide you with the
services you select. Whenever you provide such personal information, we will treat that information
in accordance with this policy. Our services are designed to give you the information that you want
to receive. DRD (Roads Service) will act in accordance with current legislation and aim to meet current
Internet best practice.
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Information
on Visitors
During the course of any visit to the DRD (Roads
Service) site, the pages you see, along with something called a cookie, which may be downloaded to your
computer (see ‘What is a Cookie?’ for more on this).
Most, if not all, websites
do this, because cookies allow the website publisher to do useful things like find out whether the computer
(and probably its user) has visited the site before. This is done on a repeat visit by checking to see,
and finding, the cookie left there on the last visit.
Any information that
is supplied by cookies can help us better understand your needs in order to provide you with a better
service and it assists us to analyse the profile of our visitors. For example: if on a previous visit
you went to, say, the Regional Planning pages, then we might find this out from your cookie and highlight
Regional Planning information on a subsequent visit.
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What
is a cookie?
When you enter a site your
computer will automatically be issued with a cookie. A cookie is a software tag used to identify visitors to our site. Cookies are text files and their purpose
is to remember user preferences by identifying your computer to our server. Cookies in themselves do not identify the individual user, just the computer used. Many sites do this
whenever a user visits their site in order to track traffic flows.
Cookies
themselves only record those areas of the site that have been visited by the computer in question, and
for how long. Users have the opportunity to set their computers to accept all cookies, to notify them when a cookie
is issued, or not to receive cookies at any time. The last of these, of course, means that certain personalised services cannot then be provided to that
user.
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Submitting
personal information
When you supply
any personal information to DRD we have legal obligations towards you in the way we process and handle
that data.
We must collect the information fairly (see the notices on particular
web pages that let you know why we are requesting the information); we must let you know how we will
use it; and we must tell you in advance if we decide to pass the information on to anyone else.
We
will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as you use the service you have requested,
and remove it in the event that the purpose has been met, or, in the case of a personalised service,
when you no longer wish to continue your registration as a personalised user.
Where
personal information is held for people who are not registered users of the site, that information will
be held only as long as necessary to ensure that the service is run smoothly.
We
will ensure that all personal information supplied is held securely, in accordance with the Data Protection
Act 1998.
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Access
to your personal information
You have
the right to request a copy of the personal information DRD (Roads Service)holds about you and to have
any inaccuracies corrected.
Please address requests to the Department (Roads
Service) using the contact address available on our website.
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Direct
marketing and user surveys
As DRD's (Roads Service) services expand,
there will be more opportunities to enhance the services provided to you.
From
time to time we may send you details of other DRD (Roads Service) services that may be of interest to
you. We may also offer you the opportunity to participate in surveys carried out by the DRD (Roads Service),
or its agents, that help our research into the types of service we offer. DRD (Roads Service) will keep
a record of information provided by you.
Please note that any information you
provide to DRD (Roads Service) will only be used within DRD (Roads Service). It will never be supplied
to third parties without first obtaining your consent unless we are obliged by law to disclose information.
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Users
under 18
If
you are under 18, please get your parent/guardian's permission beforehand whenever you provide personal
information to the DRD's (Roads Service’s) website.
Users without this consent
are not allowed to provide us with personal information.
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Confidentiality
of Responses to Consultations
The Department
(Roads Service) will publish a summary of responses following completion of the consultation process.
Your response, and all other responses to the consultation, may be disclosed on request. The Department
(Roads Service) can only refuse to disclose information in exceptional circumstances.
Before
you submit your response, please read the paragraphs below on the confidentiality of consultations and
they will give you guidance on the legal position about any information given by you in response to
this consultation.
The Freedom of Information Act gives the public a right
of access to any information held by a public authority, namely, the Department in this case. This right
of access to information includes information provided in response to a consultation. The Department
(Roads Service) cannot automatically consider as confidential information supplied to it in response
to a consultation. However, it does have the responsibility to decide whether any information provided
by you in response to this consultation, including information about your identity should be made public
or be treated as confidential.
If you do not wish information about your identity
to be made public please include an explanation in your response.
This means
that information provided by you in response to the consultation is unlikely to be treated as confidential,
except in very particular circumstances. The Lord Chancellor's Code of Practice on the Freedom of Information
Act provides that:
- the Department (Roads Service) should only accept
information from third parties in confidence if it is necessary to obtain that information in connection
with the exercise of any of the Department's functions and it would not otherwise be provided
- the
Department (Roads Service) should not agree to hold information received from third parties "in
confidence" which is not confidential in nature
- acceptance by the Department
(Roads Service) of confidentiality provisions must be for good reasons, capable of being justified to
the Information Commissioner
For further information about confidentiality
of responses please contact the Information Commissioner's Office (or see web site at: www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk
).
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