This Privacy Notice is regularly reviewed and may be updated or revised at any time. It was last updated in December 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.
- Introduction
- What personal data do we collect?
- How we use personal data
- Legal Basis for processing
- Who do we share personal data with?
- How long do we keep personal data?
- Automated decisions
- Your rights
- 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 registering a birth, marriage and death, including applying for a certificate.
Wigan Council is a data controller for civil partnership registrations.
The superintendent registrar ia a data controller for birth, mariage and death registrations.
Contact Wigan and Leigh Register Office.
The Registrar General for England and Wales is a joint data controller for birth, marriage, death and civil partnership marriage, death and civil partnership registrations and can be contacted at the General Register Office, Trafalgar Road, Southport, PR8 2HH.
What personal data do we collect?
To carry out activities and obligations as a Births, Marriages and Deaths Service we process the following personal data:
- Name
- Date of birth
- Address
- Telephone number
- Email address
- Gender
- Occupation.
We also process the following Special Category Data:
- Health-related data
- Race
- Ethnicity.
How we use personal data
The main purposes for processing your personal data are:
- For statistical or research purposes
- For administrative purposes by official bodies e.g. ensuring their records are up to date in order to provide services to the public
- To register a birth, death, marriage or civil partnership
- To give notice of marriage or civil partnership
- To request a copy certificate
- To correct information contained in a register entry
- For fraud prevention or detection, immigration and passport purposes.
Legal Basis for processing
The lawful basis we rely on for processing your personal data is:
- It is necessary to fulfil a legal obligation under the following:
- Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953
- Marriage Act 1949
- Civil Partnership Act 2004.
- It is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority
- Consent.
The condition we rely on for processing your special category data is:
- Reasons of substantial public interest – statutory etc and government purposes.
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 and collect data with the following when required:
- The Registrar General for England and Wales - all the personal information contained in a birth, death, marriage or civil partnership record is shared so that a national record of all registrations can be maintained
- UK Statistics Authority – some personal information required by law is shared. During birth registrations some information can be voluntarily supplied to the UK Statistics Authority by the birth parents
- The superintendent registrar
- Other teams within Wigan Council
- Other local authorities
- Government agencies.
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.
Registration data is retained indefinitely. Other records are kept for defined periods, such as:
- Certificate applications - 2 years
- Marriage notices - 5 years
- Routine correspondence - 3 years.
Automated decisions
All the decisions we make about you involve human intervention.
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 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: Jo Mitchell, Assistant Director – Customer Experience and Support
Author: Craig Jones, Service Manager Contact Centre Registrars and Libraries
Version and date: V2.0 December 2025