Privacy Policy

Management and ownership

This website is owned and operated by the West of England Combined Authority on behalf of the four local authorities in the West of England: Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol City, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Councils (referred to as ‘we’, ‘our’ and ‘WEST’).

Terms of use

By entering this website, you agree to the Privacy Policy described and our Terms and Conditions. We may revise this Privacy Policy and our Terms and Conditions at any time, without notice. Continued use of this site after a change has been made is your acceptance of the change.

Privacy and data protection

West of England Combined Authority is the data controller for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 2018 and other regulations including the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), which means it determines what your personal data is used for and why it is collected.

The purpose of this privacy notice is to tell you about how we collect and use personal data in connection with our service. We may update this privacy notice from time to time.

Our main address is 70 Redcliff Street, Bristol, BS1 6AL and our contact details can be found on the Combined Authority’s website.

For the purpose of processing data provided via forms on our website the West of England Combined Authority is a joint data controller with:

  • Bath & North East Somerset Council
  • Bristol City Council
  • North Somerset Council
  • South Gloucestershire Council

WEST uses HTTPS protocol which consists of a communication over Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) within an encrypted connection, protecting against man-in-the-middle attacks. You can find more information on Wikipedia.

What data do we need to collect and use?

WEST doesn’t capture and store any personal information about individuals who access this website, and you cannot be personally identified unless you choose to provide your personal information on the following cases:

  1. When completing one of our online forms or surveys. In these cases, the information you provide will be used exclusively to provide the service you have requested or as part of a survey data analysis, but may be shared with any of the West of England Councils or other partner service providers, where they are best placed to provide that service, or for the purpose of monitoring and evaluating the service that we provide, or to analyse survey data.
  2. When submitting your details to receive our newsletters and travel updates by email. By doing so you are accepting to receive email communications from us on a regular and/or ad-hoc basis. Our email communications may include, but are not limited to, promotional material, surveys, commercial material and travel information. You are also accepting to receive communications from us on behalf of our partners. Your data will be stored by MailChimp, by submitting your details you are agreeing with this and their terms of use and privacy policy.  You can choose to stop receiving our emails, or change your preferences, at any time by clicking the links available at the bottom of the emails sent to you.

We may collect usage data through our online tools to better serve our users in future tools or improve current ones, but no personal information is collected through these.

Journey Planner

In order to provide certain transport information, our journey planner may require access to your location or that you input full addresses or coordinates in certain fields. None of this personal data is stored by us.

  • Your live location is never stored, and we do not keep a historic of your live locations
  • Full addresses inputted into the journey planner are transferred into the URL of the page you have open along with their coordinates, these details will remain anonymous unless you share this URL with third parties. We do the following to this data before storing it in Google Analytics (see our Cookie Policy for more information), for monitoring purposes, so that we cannot personally identify you:
    • Addresses and postcodes are fully redacted from the data, no partial addresses are stored
    • Coordinates are stripped down so that all we can see is coordinates for somewhere within a 1 mile radius area, so we wouldn’t be able to personally identify you. We collect these high level coordinates for monitoring and improvement purposes. We want to understand the general areas our users may travel to and from, which could provide valuable insights to future transport related initiatives

How do we use your personal information?

We don’t share your personal data with any other organisation or individual unless you give your express consent, unless there is a lawful requirement to do so. All information collected is processed in accordance with the principles of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK GDPR.

We will use any personal information provided via a survey or form for the sole purpose of the subject identified within the form or survey’s page. In this case the processing is necessary for us to perform a task in the public interest or for our official functions as the transport authorities in the region.

We will use any personal information provided by newsletter sign-up forms to send you email communications as described above. In this case you as the individual have given us clear consent to process your personal data for a specific purpose.

No personal information is routinely sent or held outside the UK.  Should the transfer of personal information outside the UK become necessary, it will only take place if permitted by law, and then only where there are appropriate safeguards in place to protect the data.

How long will we keep your personal information?

We will hold this information for as long as it is needed, or if we are required to do so by law.  In practice this means that your personal information may be retained for the relevant period listed below:

  • Surveys: Most surveys will not capture any personal information. If a survey captures any personal information, this will only be retained for the duration of the project and you will be provided with relevant contact details to access a copy of your personal data and information on how to make a request to correct or delete your data.
  • Contact forms. There are different types of contact forms on our website, and the retention policy may vary, as below:
    • Generic contact form for the purpose of receiving complaints, queries or other generic issues: personal information sent via these forms will only be retained for as long as necessary to answer your query. Your personal information will be deleted shortly after we log your complaint or have deemed your query as answered.
    • Project related contact forms (for example, to suggest a new electric vehicle charge point location): Most forms of this nature will have a separate privacy policy which will indicate for how long your data will be kept for and what purpose, if not this website’s main Privacy Policy applies. The best way to request a copy of your personal information, or make a request for correction or deletion at any time, is by completing the same form or check the contact details within its privacy policy. If this is no longer available on our website please contact us using our generic contact form.

Newsletters

As of today, 29 February 2024, we are in a transitioning period between Mailchimp and our custom-made notifications dashboard. The below therefore applies to users depending on what their subscriptions are:

  • Superusers: you are able to unsubscribe from our newsletters at any time using an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email. We will keep your personal information archived indefinitely as “unsubscribed” so that we do not email you again. If you wish to permanently delete your personal information from our Mailchimp account please contact us using our generic contact form. By continuing to subscribe to our Superuser emails you are also agreeing with Mailchimp’s privacy policy.
  • Subscriptions to email notifications: you subscribe to these email notifications via widgets that can be found across our website. We only collect your email address for the purpose of this service and you are in full control of the data we keep. To manage your subscriptions, unsubscribe or delete your account visit your notifications dashboard at any time. For added security, we’ll send you a fresh login link everytime you need to access your dashboard.

Any users who have subscribed to our generic Mailchimp newsletter by 29 February 2024 will have their personal information deleted from Mailchimp by 1 April 2024.

Your right as a data subject

The law gives you a number of rights to control what and how personal information is used by us, including the right to access a copy of your personal information and withdraw your consent when we rely on your permission to use your personal data. 

The best way to request a copy of your personal information, or make a request for correction or deletion at any time, is by completing the same form you completed initially or check the contact details within relevant privacy policies on the same page.

If you believe we may still be holding personal information that you wish to delete and the original page or form is no longer available on our website please contact us using our generic contact form.

If you think we have dealt with your information inappropriately or unlawfully, you have the right to complain to the ICO at: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

Website: https://ico.org.uk/

Cookies

This website complies with the latest Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations.

Click here to read more about our Cookies Policy.

WEST Roadshow privacy policy

Click here to read more about our WEST Roadshow team privacy policy.

Updates to Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy in response to changing laws or technical or business developments. You can see when this Privacy Policy was last updated by checking the ‘last updated’ date displayed at the bottom of this Policy.

Last updated: 31/05/2024