Human Resources Privacy Notice - Next of Kin/Emergency Contact

New Forest District Council is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. For the purpose of the 2018 General Data Protection Regulation, the data controller is New Forest District Council, Appletree Court, Beaulieu Road, Lyndhurst, SO43 7PA data.protection@nfdc.gov.uk

Why does NFDC need to process your personal data?

In the case of contact details in the event of an emergency where it is necessary to contact an employee's emergency contact or their next of kin, the New Forest District Council has a legitimate interest in processing this personal data during the employment relationship of an employee. Processing emergency contact and next of kin data allows NFDC to:

maintain accurate and up-to-date employment records and contact details (including details of who to contact in the event of an emergency)
enables us to follow the cascade process if the employee is a Lone Worker in accordance with our Lone Worker policy

What information is being collected?

New Forest District Council will only collect and process information in relation to you as a nominated emergency contact or next of kin by an New Forest District Council employee.

NFDC will collect this data from employees who have directly nominated you as their emergency contact and/or next of kin. This will include your name, relationship to the employee, address, email address and contact number.

Data will be stored in the Councils HR Management System or the Lone Worker monitoring system (PNC) if appropriate.

Who has access?

Your information will be held on the Councils HR Management System and the Lone Worker monitoring system (PNC). The Human Resources team and CCTV and Community Alarms Operators will have access to the data on a day to day basis. If a line manager informs the HR team they need to contact an employee's emergency contact/next of kin, reasons will be sought from the manager and data given if deemed appropriate by Human Resources. Examples of this may be (however not exhaustive):

An employee has become unwell at work and taken to hospital
An employee has not reported for work. After failed attempts to contact the employee directly, an emergency contact/next of kin may be contacted.
An employee has not returned to work following a scheduled work appointment
Each situation will be considered depending on its individual circumstances

Your information will be shared internally with your nominated employees line manager, business unit manager and IT staff if access to the data is necessary for the performance of their roles.

NFDC will not transfer your data to countries outside the European Economic Area.

How long will we keep your information?

NFDC will hold your personal data for the duration of an employee employment, or until they notify the Council you are no longer their emergency contact/next of kin.

How do we protect your data?

NFDC takes security of your data seriously. All information provided is stored on our secure servers as managed by the IT Department. We have internal policies and controls in place to try to ensure that your data is not lost, accidently destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by its employees in the performance of their duties.

Your rights:

As a data subject, you have a number of rights. You can:

access and obtain a copy of your data on request;
require the organisation to change incorrect or incomplete data;
require the organisation to delete or stop processing your data, for example where the data is no longer necessary for the purposes of processing; and
object to the processing of your data where the organisation is relying on its legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing.

If you believe that the organisation has not complied with your data protection rights, you can complain to the Information Commissioner.

Information Commissioner - https://ico.org.uk/
Telephone helpline - 0303 123 1113
Email - casework@ico.org.uk

Further information

For further information, plus information on access, portability, withdrawal of consent, correction etc. please see:

Information Rights Policy (PDF, 237 KB)