Adult Social Care Privacy Notice

This Privacy Notice is regularly reviewed and may be updated or revised at any time. It was last updated in June 2025. It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes.

  1. Introduction
  2. What personal data do we collect?
  3. How we use personal data
  4. Legal Basis for processing
  5. Who do we share personal data with?
  6. How long do we keep personal data?
  7. Automated decisions
  8. Your rights
  9. Data Protection Officer.

Introduction

Our core data protection obligations and commitments are set out in Wigan Council Primary Privacy Notice.

This notice provides additional privacy information for Adult Social Care.

What personal data do we collect?

To carry out activities and obligations as an Adult Social Care service we process the following personal data:

  • Name
  • Title
  • Address
  • Telephone number
  • Email address
  • Date of birth
  • Gender
  • Marital status
  • Civil partnership
  • Next of kin
  • Key relationships
  • Bank account details
  • Payroll
  • Tax/national insurance status information
  • Photos/images (where this is with your consent)
  • GP
  • Next of kin
  • Identification numbers (including NHS number), online identifier and factors specific to a person’s physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity. This could include reports from the Police, Court Information and Health information e.g. DNA
  • Details of professionals involved in your care and information they have about you to support your care. This may include sensitive information such as details of domestic or financial abuse or neglect.

 We also process the following Special Category Data:

  • Race
  • Ethnicity
  • Religious beliefs
  • Sexual orientation
  • Political opinions
  • Physical and/or mental health needs
  • Disabilities and/or health conditions/diagnoses
  • Capacity
  • Support needs or issues.

 We also process the following Criminal Offence Data:

  • Offences
  • Criminal proceedings including outcomes and sentences.

How we use personal data

The main purposes for processing your personal data are to provide services under Adult Social Care legislation and to comply with our legal obligations. For example, this will include:

  • Where it is necessary in order to assess and meet your needs for care and support
  • Where it is necessary in order to prevent, reduce and delay needs for care and support
  • Where it is necessary in order to safeguard and promote your well-being
  • Where it is necessary in order to investigate and protect you against the risk of abuse or neglect
  • Where it is necessary in order to meet your needs for aftercare
  • Where it is necessary in order to determine your capacity and best interests
  • Where it is necessary in order to determine the costs of services and in planning your budget
  • Where it is necessary for carrying out obligations under social protection law, public health law or in the substantial public interest.

Please note: You do however have the right to refuse certain services. In the event that you do refuse a service or intervention we will only retain data that is necessary to demonstrate that our legal obligations have been discharged e.g. we will keep a record of your refusal and the reasons for it.

Legal basis for processing

The lawful bases we rely on for processing your personal data are:

  • To fulfil a legal obligation
  • To perform a task in the public interest.

The legal obligations and tasks in the public interest arise from the following (non-exhaustive) list:

    • The Care Act 2014
    • The Mental Health Act 1983
    • The Mental Capacity Act 2005
    • Local Government Act 2003
    • Local Government and Finance Act 1992.
  • You have given consent for certain services where there is no legal obligation or official authority/task in the public interest
  • The processing is necessary to protect someone’s life – We will use or share your personal information if it is necessary to protect the life of you or another person. This is most likely to be in an emergency situation and we may not be able to talk to you about sharing your data during the emergency; once the emergency is over, we will seek to advise you of the use at the earliest opportunity.

The conditions we rely on for processing your special category and criminal offence data are:

  • That it is necessary for the provision of health or social care
  • In emergency cases, the processing is necessary to protect your vital interests.

Who do we share personal data with?

In addition to the general reasons for data sharing described in the Council’s Primary Privacy Notice, we share data with or receive data from the following when required:

  • Other Council Departments including, but not limited to Housing, Council tax, Health protection and civil contingencies
  • Organisations that provide support i.e., residential homes, supported accommodation, personal assistants
  • NHS including GPs and other health service services and providers. We export information into the integrated shared care record – a single data-viewer for patient/service user information drawn from a range of care settings that can include acute care, primary care, social care, community care, child health, and mental health. This gives clinicians, GPs and organisations that provide services to meet health needs the ability to see data from different care settings and allows more joined-up, effective care. This is to ensure you get access to the right kind of direct clinical and co-ordinated care and support and gives us all an accurate record of the services that have been involved in your care
  • Government departments, including but not limited to, Department of Health and Social Care, Department for Education
  • The police
  • HM Courts and Tribunals Service, including individual courts
  • Youth justice system
  • The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS)
  • Other local authorities
  • Any other person or organisation exercising functions or are engaged in activities in relation to children and adults in the authority’s area.

 Please note: This is not an exhaustive list.

How long do we keep personal data?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any future legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

We must continue to retain necessary data in accordance with our corporate records policy to fulfil legal, statutory and regulatory requirements.

Automated decisions

All the decisions we make about you involve human intervention, although we do use Generative AI through a tool called Conversation to Assessment. This transcribes recordings of assessments with service users and is subject to human intervention prior to uploading your personal data to our case management system, Mosaic.

Your rights

More information on how to seek advice to exercise your rights, raise a concern or complain about the handling of your personal data by the council can be found in at Wigan Council Primary Privacy Notice.

Data Protection Officer

If you wish to raise a concern or seek clarification about any aspect of this notice, please contact our Data Protection Officer. Please provide documents to prove your identity along with a description of your concern.

We will normally respond to all requests within one month.

If you are unhappy with the way that we handle your concern you may complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) (external link).

Document information

Owner: Mike Wharton, Assistant Director Adult Social Care Practice

Author: Various

Version and date: V6.0 June 2025