Free school meals privacy notice

This privacy notice is designed to help you understand how and why we 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). The School Welfare Team are responsible for the assessment of free school meal eligibility.
 
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?

In order to deliver this service, we will need to collect personal data:

• parent/ guardian contact details: name, address, telephone number and email
• details about you: date of birth, national insurance number, benefits (in order to check eligibility) and gender
• details about your child: name, date of birth, gender, school and year group
• if you have declared a partner on your claim for benefits we may also use details about them (date of birth, national insurance number and gender) to ensure we have matched the correct family on our systems

Why do we collect your personal information?

We will process the personal data outlined above for the following purposes:

• to check whether your child is eligible for free school meals
• notify your child’s school of their entitlement to free school meals
• to assess your child’s eligibility to receive home to school transport
• to deal with any complaints or concerns
• detect fraud and protect public funds

Who do we obtain your information from?

If you apply for free school meals online, you provide this information to us directly. Someone else (for example school staff, a social worker, your GP or Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB)) can also apply on your behalf.

While providing this service, we may also receive information from the following external agencies:

• Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)  
• Department for Education (DfE)

We also carry out a data matching exercise each year to identify children who might be entitled to free school meals. Please view our page for further information on free school meals.

Who do we share this information with?

• your child’s school to let them know that your child has been awarded a free school meal
• the Department for Education’s Free School Meals checking service
• if you move to a different local authority, we may also need to share information with them - this is to confirm that your child was awarded free school meals in North Yorkshire

How long do we keep your information for?

We hold personal data in line with our retention schedule. We keep your personal data as long as your child remains eligible for free school meals, and then for a further six years. We need to keep your information for this long to comply with anti-fraud legislation.

At the end of the retention period, the information is reviewed and only retained where there is an ongoing requirement to retain for a statutory or legal purpose. Following this, personal information will be securely destroyed.

We may also anonymise some personal data you provide to us to ensure that you cannot be identified and use this data to allow the Council to effectively target and plan the provision of services.

What is our lawful basis for processing your information?

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

Under data protection law, we need to have a lawful basis to process personal data. We are required by law to provide Free School Meals to eligible children in North Yorkshire under Section 512 of the Education Act 1996. The local authority has the “general power of competence” under Section 1 of the Localism Act 2011 to auto-enrol children eligible for Free School Meals.

UK GDPR Article 6 (1) (c) – processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject.

Under the UK GDPR, the lawful basis that applies to the processing of personal data in relation to these services is Article 6(1)(e) Public task.

For more information about how we use your data, including your privacy rights and the complaints process, please see our corporate privacy notice.