Privacy StatementThe Data Protection Act 1998 imposes a legal duty on the Department to protect any personal information we collect from, or about, you. If you are a user with general public and anonymous access, this website does not store or capture personal information, but logs your IP address which the web server automatically recognises.
When you supply any personal information to us we have legal obligations towards you in the way we process and handle that data. We must collect the information fairly, 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.
Personal InformationFrom time to time, we may ask you for personal information about yourself (eg name and email address etc) in order for you to receive or use services on our website. Occasionally, you may be asked for information about your professional interests or more detailed personal information. This helps us to provide you with the services you select.Whenever you provide this, we will treat it in accordance with this policy. The department acts in accordance with current legislation and aims to meet current Internet best practice.
If you volunteer your e-mail address or other information to us, the system will record this and it will be treated as proprietary and confidential. If you send us an e-mail or letter asking for information that belongs to another department we may forward your request to that department for action and advise you that we have done so.
Unless you specifically ask us not to do so, we may also disclose personal data to consultants, agents and representatives carrying out consultancy work on our behalf, in which case you will be advised that we are doing so.
Apart from these exceptions, we do not pass any personal information you have given us to any other site.
We may use information you provide to us for internal review and to notify you about updates to the website.
Access to Personal InformationYou have the right to request a copy of the personal information DoE holds about you and to have any inaccuracies corrected. Please address requests to Road Safety Division.CookiesWhen you enter this site your computer will automatically be issued with a cookie which will be downloaded to your computer along with the pages you choose to see.A cookie is a software tag used to identify visitors to our site. The cookie allows 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.
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 and they only record those areas of the site that have been visited by the computer in question, and for how long.
You can set your computer to accept all cookies, to notify you when a cookie is issued, or not to receive cookies at any time. The last of these means that certain personalised services cannot then be provided to you.
Most, if not all, websites do this. Cookie information helps us better understand your needs in order to provide you with a better service and it lets us track traffic flows to our site. For example, if on a previous visit you looked at information on taxis or road safety, then we might find this out from your cookie and highlight taxi or road safety information on a subsequent visit.
Users under 18If you are under 18, please get your parent/guardian's permission beforehand whenever you provide personal information to this website. Users without this consent are not allowed to provide us with personal information.Other Web SitesOur site provides links to other websites. As this policy only applies to our website you should always read the privacy statement/policy of any site you access that collects personal information.Confidentiality of Responses to ConsultationsThe Department will publish a summary of responses following completion of a consultation process. Your response, and all other responses to a consultation, may be disclosed on request. The Department 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 any of our consultations.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 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 a 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 a 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 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 should not agree to hold information received from third parties "in confidence" which is not confidential in nature; acceptance by the Department 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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