As Public Protection Services, we are responsible for delivering a wide range of regulatory and statutory functions on behalf of the Council. We enforce a wide range of legislation aimed at protecting public health, ensuring a safe trading environment for citizens and businesses and protecting the environment.
Our Environmental Health services ensure that we investigate requests for service and take action to tackle pollution, public & animal health issues (including pest and animal control). This includes undertaking proactive inspections for environmental permitting, private water supplies and contaminated land duties. We also protect food safety or workplace health issues by inspecting businesses and investigating complaints or accidents and take action to protect the public from contagious and infectious diseases. We also undertake inspections of premises to ensure the health and welfare of animals going into the human food chain.
Our Trading Standards service works to protect consumers and local businesses from unfair trading practices and support legitimate businesses. The service investigates consumer complaints to ensure their rights and safety are protected as well as tackling the harm caused by rogue traders and businesses that trade unfairly or profit from selling counterfeit, unsafe or illicit goods. We also inspect businesses to ensure compliance with a wide range of consumer protection legislation such as product safety, age restricted sales, weights and measures, food standards and labelling, animal feed hygiene. The service provides support to victims of scams and work with partner agencies to provide access to other support services. The service also provides a verification testing service for certain weighing and measuring equipment.
As a Licensing Authority, we licence premises to ensure responsible retailing of alcohol, music and dancing to ensure that they do not have a negative impact on the local community. We also ensure that the County Borough has a fleet of taxis that safely meets the needs of our communities and whose drivers are subject to strict vetting. We licence additional activities such as pet shops, animal boarding and breeding establishments and scrap metal dealers. As a service, we also licence skin piercing activities (such as tattooing), firework sale and storage facilities and regulate premises that store and sell petroleum.
The lawful basis for the processing of your information is:
- 6(1)(c) Processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation
- 6(1)(e) Processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller
There are a large number of legislative requirements with which we must comply and therefore process personal data. A full list is available upon request.
If you do not give us the information we need when we ask for it, this may result in:
- The Local Authority not being able to ensure that it undertakes its statutory duties and enforces the legislation for which it has responsibility. In some cases information must be provided to enable the Local Authority to conduct an investigation, and failure to do so could be an offence under legislation.
We may collect the following types of personal data about you to deliver this service, depending on your circumstances:
Name;
Address;
Date of birth;
Gender;
Unique reference number;
Telephone number;
Email address;
Your family composition;
Your social circumstances;
Employment and education details;
Images/photographs;
Vehicle registration number;
Information about your health;
Information about your sex life or sexual orientation;
Criminal convictions and offences; etc.
To provide this service, we collect information directly from you but also receive information from the following sources:
- Other Local Authority Services
- Other Government Agencies and Organisations, such as, Food Standards Agency, Public Health Wales, Health and Safety Executive, Animal and Plant Health Agency, Rural Inspectorate Wales and Natural Resources Wales.
- Any public body responsible for the disclosure, prevention of crime, fraud, or auditing.
- Emergency Services
- Other Local Authorities
The following types of personal data may be obtained, depending on your circumstances:
Name;
Address;
Date of birth;
Gender;
Unique reference number;
Telephone number;
Email address;
Bank/payment details;
Your family composition;
Your social circumstances;
Employment and education details;
Images/photographs;
Vehicle registration number;
Information about your health;
Your racial or ethnic origin;
Information about your sex life or sexual orientation;
Criminal convictions and offences; etc.
Your information will not be transferred outside the United Kingdom.
We may share your information with the following recipients depending on your circumstances:
Internally:
Internal Council Services such as:
- Council Tax
- Legal & Governance Services
- ICT and Information Management - any access will only be for resolving any technical issues with our systems and any viewing of data will be incidental.
- Customer Contact Services
- Planning ServicesExternally:
- National Trading Standards Team
- Public Health Wales/ NHS
- Health and Safety Executive
- Food Standards Agency
- Animal and Plant Health Agency
- Rural Inspectorate Wales
- Police
- Local Health Board
- Welsh Government
- Natural Resources Wales
- Welsh Water (Dwr Cymru) and other water suppliers
- Other Local Authorities
- Other legal representatives where applicable
Trusted third party suppliers and organisations who provide service on our behalf:
- Environmental Consultants working on behalf of the Council
- IT Software Support partners – any access will only be for resolving any technical issues with our systems and any viewing of data will be incidental.
- RH Environmental Ltd who provide 'The noise app', which enables complainants to record noise nuisance in order to aid an investigation
There are also other specific situations where we may be required to disclose information about you, such as:
Where the Council is required to provide the information by law
• Where disclosing the information is required to prevent or detect a crime
• Where disclosure is in the vital interests of the person concerned