Disclaimer, terms and conditions

This page explains our online services terms and conditions of use.

The terms “we”, “us” and “our” refers to South Gloucestershire Council. We use the term “you” to refer to you as the person or business customer.

‘Our website’ refers to www.southglos.gov.uk or beta.southglos.gov.uk  (our new website)

‘Your account’ refers to your single customer account with us at account.southglos.gov.uk

Online services refer to both our website and your single customer account with us (your account).

Your account

By setting up your account with us, you can apply for, pay for or request certain council services online, depending on when we make these features available, at a time that is convenient for you. You can use your account to follow the progress of these requests or payments.

You must be 16 or over to have an account.

Your account makes it easier to keep your correspondence with us safe and easily accessible from one place at any time.

You can set preferences within your account for certain functionality including information alerts by email.

Your account is managed by South Gloucestershire Council. If you have any queries about your information held on your account, please call our customer services team on 01454 868009.

Our website

Our website is managed by the digital team within South Gloucestershire Council.

You do not need a single customer account (your account) to use our website, however you may need it to complete some transactions.

Acceptance of these terms and conditions

In order to be able to use your account and within our website we need you to agree to these terms and conditions. Also, by creating a Customer Account you will be asked to provide information about yourself, such as contact information, that will be retained so that when we make more of our services available via this channel you won’t need to repeat the information again before requesting a service.

Using our online services

You agree to use our online services only for lawful purposes. Accessing or attempting to gain access to our online services by unauthorised users is prohibited and is an offence under the United Kingdom Computer Misuse Act 1990.

Security

We will ask you to set up a secure password to access your account.

We will also ask you to verify your identify when you set up your account, by sending an email to the email address provided.

You must take reasonable precautions to keep these security details safe and prevent anyone else from accessing them. Ensure your password is secure by avoiding dictionary words and use a combination of letters, numbers and symbols. Never use the same password as on other websites. Never write down your password where it could easily be associated with your account. Do not save your password in the browser if using a public or third-party computer system. Always log out of your account when you have finished using it.

You must inform us as soon as possible if you think your security details have been compromised or misused.

South Gloucestershire Council store your data in compliance with the GDPR security of processing personal data requirements, article 32.

Processing your personal information

By setting up and using your account, your personal information (your name, address, email account and any other details you choose to provide to us which identify you) may be processed for the purposes of providing any statutory and non-statutory services to you, both by South Gloucestershire Council and any contracted third-party organisations. Examples of third party organisations include our providers of hosting and data processing services. Processing your information will be done in accordance with our privacy notice and in compliance with data protection legislation.

Consent

By setting up and using your account, you are granting your explicit consent to South Gloucestershire Council to hold and process your data for as long as we have a legitimate business need to do so, in line with our privacy notice and in compliance with data protection legislation.

Termination or suspension of account

Please also refer to ‘Request to remove content’ below.

We may close your account if

• your relationship is ended with us (e.g. moving out of South Gloucestershire)
• we detect malicious activity, for example trying to introduce malware within our systems or submitting aggressive or offensive content
• you request us to remove your data or you withdraw your consent in line with data protection legislation and our privacy notice

If we close your account, we will delete your data and password from the My Details section.  You will no longer be able to sign in to your account.

You may choose to close your account by contacting us on 01454 868009.

Please note that once your account is closed, we are unable to recover it.

Copyright

All material on our website is subject to copyright and is published by South Gloucestershire Council.

Material on our website may only be downloaded or copied for personal use.

You must not commercially exploit any material on our website without prior written permission from us.

Appropriate acknowledgement of the copyright owner is required if material on our website is re-published in any format. For further information please contact us using the form on this page.

All material on our website is to be used at your sole risk. We are not responsible for the accuracy of any information accessed from our website and do not give any warranty or representation, express or implied, in respect of its completeness or suitability for any particular purpose.

Linking to our website

We welcome and encourage other websites to link to our website. You must however contact us for permission if you wish to

• indicate that your services or website are associated with or endorsed by South Gloucestershire Council
• charge your website users to click on a link to any page on our website

Disclaimer

You are responsible for the accuracy of information of any personal details and information that you enter when setting up or updating your account details.  This includes delegating a third-party to enter or change these details on your behalf.

We aim to make sure that the information available on our website is accurate, but we have no control over and do not endorse the content of any linked websites.

We reserve the right to remove or alter any information on our website without warning.

If you spot something that you think may be incorrect, please contact us using the form on this page so that we can put it right.

From time to time the links to information on our website may change or no longer be available. If you find a broken link please let us know so that we can check if the information is still available or has moved.

We aim to ensure our online services are available 99.9% of the time, except during scheduled periods of maintenance. We cannot however be held responsible for unforeseen website problems, outage or unavailability of our online services due to circumstances outside our control.

Request to remove content

We will remove your personal data (your account), subject to lawful conditions, when

• it is no longer necessary
• you withdraw your consent
• you object to it being stored
• it has been unlawfully obtained or provided
• there is a legal obligation upon us to do so

To request your personal data to be removed, please contact us.

We will remove content from our website at our discretion and in discussion with the relevant responsible service if

• the information is misleading or out of date
• it is necessary to comply with data protection legislation covering the rights and freedoms of individuals
• it breaches copyright laws, contains sensitive personal data or material that may be considered obscene or defamatory

To request website content to be removed, please use the contact form on this page.

Requesting information

You can request information from us that isn’t available on our website under the Freedom of Information Act and Data Protection Act. For more information visit www.southglos.gov.uk/foi

Maps

We may display online maps on our website for locating or enabling you to pinpoint something, e.g. a faulty streetlamp.  Our online mapping software is protected by Crown copyright under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.  

National Fraud Initiative – Fair Processing Notice

South Gloucestershire Council is required by law to protect the public funds it administers. It may share information provided to it with other bodies responsible for; auditing, or administering public funds, or where undertaking a public function, in order to prevent and detect fraud.

The Cabinet Office is responsible for carrying out data matching exercises.

Data matching involves comparing computer records held by one body against other computer records held by the same or another body to see how far they match. This is usually personal information. Computerised data matching allows potentially fraudulent claims and payments to be identified. Where a match is found it may indicate that there is an inconsistency which requires further investigation. No assumption can be made as to whether there is fraud, error or other explanation until an investigation is carried out.

We participate in the Cabinet Office’s National Fraud Initiative: a data matching exercise to assist in the prevention and detection of fraud. We are required to provide particular sets of data to the Minister for the Cabinet Office for matching for each exercise.

The use of data by the Cabinet Office in a data matching exercise is carried out with statutory authority under Part 6 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. It does not require the consent of the individuals concerned under the Data Protection Act 2018.

Data matching by the Cabinet Office is subject to a Code of Practice.

View further information on the Cabinet Office’s legal powers and the reasons why it matches particular information.

For further information on data matching at this authority contact the Counter Fraud Team, auditfraud@southglos.gov.uk .

Changes to these terms and conditions

We may update these terms and conditions without notice. Please check them regularly. You will agree to any changes if you continue to use our services after the terms and conditions have been updated.

 

This page was last updated 17 December 2019.