SEPA privacy notice – Scotland’s Environment Web

Who we are

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (“SEPA”, “we”, “us” or “our”) was established by the Environment Act 1995 and has its principal place of business at Strathallan House, Castle Business Park, Stirling, FK9 4TZ.

How we use your personal information

For more information on how SEPA handles personal information, please see also our General privacy notice.

This privacy notice explains how we collect and use personal information provided when you provide personal information when using the contact us page on Scotland’s Environment Web. This notice also applies to personal information processed after it has been collected from the following websites:

The website is managed by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) on behalf of the partner bodies.

For data protection purposes, SEPA acts as the data controller for the personal information submitted via the webpages listed above.

The legal basis for processing this information is that we obtain your consent when you submit personal information via the Contact Us pages. You can withdraw your consent at any time, please see Withdrawing consent to using your information below.

When you complete the Contact Us form, you will be asked for the following personal information

  • Your name
  • Email address

This information and the content of your message will be held securely on SEPA systems.

How we share personal information

Where the content of your Contact us message relates to a matter handled by a partner body, your message and contact details will be forwarded to the appropriate organisation. Any sharing will be carried out lawfully and securely in accordance with the Data Protection Principles. Information will be sent by secure means.

These partner bodies include:

  • Cairngorms National Park Authority
  • Crofting Commission
  • Scottish Forestry
  • Forestry and Land Scotland
  • Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park Authority
  • Marine Scotland
  • The Scottish Government
  • Scottish Land Commissioner
  • Scottish Natural Heritage
  • James Hutton Institute (Soils)
  • The Crown Estate Scotland (Aquaculture)
  • Food Standards Scotland (Aquaculture)

The partner body will then handle and process your personal information under the terms of their individual privacy notices.

How long do we keep your data?

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to handle the request.

Information - You have the right to clear information about how we collect and use your personal information – this privacy notice is one example of how we do this

Access - To request a copy of your information, please complete the Data Subject Access Request Form or contact dataprotection@sepa.org.uk.

Correction - You have the right to ask for any personal information that is inaccurate or incomplete to be corrected

In certain circumstances, you will have the following extra rights:

Erasure - You have the right to ask for your personal data to be deleted under certain circumstance

Objection to processing - You have the right to object to our use or your personal information under certain circumstances

Restriction on processing - If you make an objection, our use of your personal information may be temporarily suspended whilst we deal with your request

Portability - You have the right to ask for a copy of your personal information in a machine readable format to pass to another organisation under certain circumstances

SEPA has a Data Protection Officer who makes sure we respect your rights and follow the law. If you have any concerns or questions about how we look after your personal information, please contact SEPA’s Data Protection Officer, Alison M. Mackinnon at dataprotection@sepa.org.uk or by calling 03000 99 66 99 and ask to speak to the Data Protection Officer.

Correcting your information

If you have provided your name, email address, organisation name and/or area of interest you can update this information by contacting us.

Withdrawing consent to using your information

Where we use your personal information with your consent, you may withdraw that consent at any time and we will stop using your personal information for the purpose(s) for which consent was given. You can request that we remove your information by contacting us.

Changes to our privacy notice

We keep this privacy notice under regular review and will place any updates on Scotland’s Environment website. Paper copies of the privacy notice may also be obtained by contacting us.

Complaints

We seek to resolve directly all complaints about how we handle personal information but you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office. They can be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/ or 0303 123 1113

Cookies

This site uses session cookies to enhance Your interaction with our site. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. A cookie will typically contain the name of the domain from which the cookie has come, the "lifetime" of the cookie, and a value, usually a randomly generated unique number. Cookies can help a website to arrange content to match your preferred interests more quickly. Most major websites use cookies. Cookies cannot be used by themselves to identify you.

Session cookies last only for the duration of Your visit and are deleted when you close your browser. These facilitate various tasks such as allowing a website to identify that a user of a particular device is navigating from page to page, supporting website security or basic functionality. They contain no personal information that can be used to identify you. If you are concerned about the potential use of information gathered from your computer by cookies, you can set your browser to prompt you before it accepts a cookie. Most Internet browsers have settings that let you identify and/or reject cookies.

Third party cookies

The site uses Google Analytics which generates statistics about visitors and visits to the Scotland's environment website.

These cookies enable the function of Google Analytics. This helps us take and analyse visitor information such as browser usage, new visitor numbers, response to marketing activity and server response times. That information helps us to improve the website and your application experience.

What if I don't want to accept cookies?

Changes to online privacy laws across the EU since May 2011 require consent for the use of cookies and other similar web technologies. The new legislation was introduced to help you choose whether or not to allow each website you to use cookies when you visit them. It is your right to choose if You give Your consent or not but you should be aware that in some cases you may not be able to use or see all the features of our Website, if you do not allow the use of cookies.

You can also visit www.allaboutcookies.org for comprehensive information on how to block or restrict cookies on a wide variety of browsers. You’ll also find details on how to delete cookies from your computer, as well as more general information about cookies. For information on how to do this on the browser of your mobile phone you’ll need to refer to your handset manual.

Data protection, access to information and freedom of information

Where they are using personal data, the individual Scotland’s environment web partners have registered with the UK Information Commissioner and will only use personal data for the purposes set out in their notification as submitted to the Information Commissioner.

If you apply to Us for information we may pass your request to the most appropriate Partner Body to deal with that request. That Partner Body will use the information You supplied to answer Your query and for related purposes. This may include letting You know more about the work of the Partner Bodies. If you do not want Us to use Your information for related purposes You can contact Us to let us know.

Under the Data Protection Act 1998, You are entitled to request access to information held about You and You are entitled to ask Us to make any necessary changes to ensure that it is accurate and kept up to date.

Any of Us may be asked to release information under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 or the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004.

If You want further information from that which is on this Website You should approach whichever is the most relevant body with a request for information, which may be made under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 or the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004

This privacy notice was last updated on 6 September 2018


This page was reviewed on 26 Nov 2019

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