Covid-19 business support grants privacy notice

This privacy notice is designed to help you understand how and why North Yorkshire Council processes your personal data. This notice should be read in conjunction with our corporate privacy notice.

Who are we?

North Yorkshire Council is a ‘data controller’ as defined by Article 4(7) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the government announced a set of financial measures to provide support to businesses that experienced increased costs or disruptions to their cash flow as a result of Covid-19.

If you previously applied or chose to apply for financial support, the council processed your personal data to assess whether your business is eligible to receive financial support, and if so, to provide a payment to you. The council are the data controller in relation to the personal data processed for the purposes of assessing eligibility, administering and managing payments under the Covid-19 business grant schemes. Further information about these schemes, relevant guidance and support can be found here.

The council has appointed Veritau to be its data protection officer. Their contact details are:

Information Governance Office
Veritau
West Offices
Station Rise
York
North Yorkshire
YO1 6GA

Email: infogov@northyorks.gov.uk

Tel: 01904 552848

What personal information do we collect?

To administer business grants, we collect and process the personal data that you provide to us when completing your application for a business grant. Most of the information collected will be in relation to your business, however the following personal information may also be collected from you:

• full name;
• full residential address (if your business is registered here);
• bank details (where your personal bank account is used);
• email address;
• date of birth.

Why do we collect your personal information?

We process your information in order to assess your eligibility for business grants under the Covid-19 business grant schemes and administer these accordingly.

Following receipt of the above grants, we retain your information in order to manage the grant scheme and for financial and audit purposes. This is in accordance with relevant legislative and regulatory requirements.

Who do we obtain your information from?

We collect the above personal information from you through the completion of a business grant application.

Who do we share this information with?

To administer the grant schemes, we may share information with the following external organisations:

If you have applied for a grant, we carry out checks for verification purposes against existing non-domestic rates (business rates) records to ensure your business is eligible for the scheme.

Information relating to your application will also be sent to the department for business, energy and industrial strategy for monitoring, research and evaluation purposes. The department for business, energy and industrial strategy may contact businesses for research purposes, follow up evaluation surveys relating to the business support grant schemes.

Information may also be shared for prevention and detection of fraud and/or other criminal activities and for suspension and/or recovery of the grant where necessary.

We may share information for the purpose of counter fraud activity and debt recovery with other government departments, agencies and/or local authorities.

We will not share this data with other organisations or individuals outside of North Yorkshire Council for any other purpose.

How long do we keep your information for?

We will only keep your personal data for as long as it needed for the purposes of Covid-19 emergency, and for audit and payment purposes.

Please note, the UK government has announced the Covid-19 public inquiry which requires the council to retain information for compliance with the inquiry. Once concluded, the council will dispose of information in accordance with appropriate retention periods.

What is our lawful basis for processing your information?

North Yorkshire Council relies on the following lawful basis to process your personal data:

• UK GDPR Article 6 (1)(c) – processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which he data controller is subject
• UK GDPR Article 6(1)(e) – processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller

The legislations, policies and guidance that relate to this service includes, but is not limited to:

• the local government finance act 1988