Website privacy and cookies

What this page is for

This privacy notice explains how we, Norfolk County Council (the County Council), uses any personal information you give to us online on our website, and the ways in which we protect your privacy when visiting us online.

By ‘use’ we mean the various ways your personal information may be processed including storing and sharing the information.

This notice provides information relating to:

Cookies generally and specific cookies relating to:
- tracking and behaviour analytics
- advertising including pay per click
- remarketing
How we collect your information online
- via Online forms and customer data bases
- via Your My Norfolk account
- for Online payments
- for Customer website feedback
- for Email alerts and newsletters
External links

Further details

We also provide more information in our general privacy notice on our website regarding:

Who we are
How long we use your information for (unless set out in this notice)
The name and contact details of our Data Protection Officer
Your rights under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (the GDPR) and
How to exercise them

Cookies

We use cookies on this website. A cookie is a text file sent to your browser and stored there. This enables the web server to recognise your computer when you revisit our website.

We use cookies for things like collecting website usage data (via Google Analytics and Sitecore, our website content management system), which help us to improve the website and to display more relevant content to users based on previous sessions spent our website.

Most browsers allow you to refuse to accept cookies. This may, however, have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites, and may prevent you from accessing some services available on this website.

If you are a user with general public and anonymous access, the County Council website does not store or capture personal information except for the user's IP address that is automatically recognised by the web server.

More detailed information about how we use cookies on this website and how to disable them

Cookies for tracking and behaviour analytics

We use:

Google Analytics and Sitecore, which anonymously track things like numbers of visits/visitors/pageviews to our website, popular pages, customer journeys, and what browser or device people are using. It does not collect any personal information about the individual user. This enables us to monitor the performance of the website, ensure it can be used by everybody, and to deliver relevant and timely information to users. Based on anonymous browsing activity and cookie information, we may personalise some areas of content to deliver more relevant information to website visitors. You can delete cookies if you do not want to see personalised content
HotJar to look at heat maps and make recordings of specific user journeys to help us better understand how people navigate through the website, so we can improve this wherever needed.
All data Hotjar collects is stored electronically in Ireland, Europe on the Amazon Web Services infrastructure. The database containing visitor and usage data is only accessible from the application servers and no outside sources are allowed to connect to the database. Hotjar data retention times are no longer than 365 days. Site visitors are assigned a unique user identifier (UUID) so that Hotjar can keep track of returning visitors without relying on any personal information, such as the IP address. IP addresses of visitors are always suppressed. When collecting data with Recordings, Hotjar automatically suppresses keystroke data on all input fields: the data is suppressed on the visitor’s browser, which means it never reaches Hotjar

Find out how to opt out of tracking cookies

Cookies for Advertising

Pay per click

We use Google Adwords to place pay per click adverts on Google search results pages. If you visit our site after clicking on one of these adverts, you will have an adwords cookie set on your device. Data about your visit will then be collected by Google into an anonymised set of statistics that tell us how groups of people have responded to the adverts. This data is held on Google’s Adwords platform.

Remarketing

We have some remarketing scripts running on the website. Remarketing is a form of online advertising which tracks a user's browsing history to provide personalised messages on other websites. We have remarketing scripts for platforms and related advertising services such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google Adsense. This gives us aggregate and general data about whether certain campaigns are being seen and allows us to share further messages with customers via those platforms.

We don’t have access to personal data through remarketing scripts for platforms and related advertising service such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google Adsense.

How these platforms process personal data, can be managed through the privacy controls and agreements customers have with those platforms:

You can also prevent data about your activity on our site being shared with these platforms by declining advertising cookies on our site.

We sometimes also work with advertising agencies to assist us in assessing the effectiveness of online advertising campaigns. For example, we are working with Can Digital who are acting as data processor on our behalf. Can Digital collects geographic information, such as your IP address or information derived from your device’s location services. You can also prevent data about your activity being shared with this agency by declining the advertising cookie on our site.

Find out how to opt out of advertising cookies

How we collect your information online

We collect personal information from visitors to our website in several ways, for example, for:

Requests for information or services via email and online forms
Requests for information or services via Customer account (My Norfolk account)
Customer feedback via an online form or optional online survey
Online payments
Email alerts and newsletters
Live chat

This is set in more detail below.

Online forms and customer databases

When we collect information via online forms, we will only ask for the information required to effectively deal with the enquiry or application. Information provided will either be sent to an email inbox or will added to a customer database.

Our main customer database used by Customer Services is our CRM provided by Microsoft Dynamics. For some NCC services, they may also hold customer information in a service specific database. All our customer databases are subject to data quality controls in line with the GDPR. We use the information provided to process customer enquiries, provide the required service, verify customer identity, update customer records, and test/resolve system or process errors.

More details about how your information is processed can be found in our detailed privacy notices for the County Council’s various services in our privacy notice page on our website. These privacy notices include:

What we use your information for
What personal data we collect and use about you
Who we share your information with
How the law protects you and the legal basis for processing your information
How long will we keep your personal information for

Some of our online forms are built on platforms supplied by a third party, for example:

Grancius forms (GovService): data held on this platform is held entirely within the EU and the cookies used are essential to know that you are logged in and are the same unique user when you go to each page. See Granicus’ privacy policy for more information
Sitecore forms: Sitecore transfers data only in accordance with legally approved transfer mechanisms that are appropriate under applicable data protection laws, including the European Union Model Clauses and the Privacy Shield. For full information see Sitecore’s Privacy Policy and Sitecore's cookie policy

Customer account including My Norfolk account

If you sign up for a My Norfolk customer account via our website, we will use the data you provide to:

Resolve any queries or process any applications you may make through the account
Understand how we can improve our services or information
Offer status updates if appropriate, or
Signpost other relevant services

You can apply for the following services through your My Norfolk account:

Copy certificates (births, deaths, marriages - Registration Services)
Skip and scaffold licence (for businesses)
Report a highways problem
Access your social care account - for adult social care or child’s social care

We also provide a number of other customer accounts for specific purposes, for example

Jobs
Library
School admissions
Some adult learning courses

More details about how your information is used in relation to these accounts can be found in our detailed privacy notices for the County Council’s various Services in our privacy notice page on our website. These privacy notices include:

What we use your information for
What personal data we collect and use about you
Who we share your information with
How the law protects you and the legal basis for processing your information
How long will we keep your personal information
In respect of the requests and enquiries logged in the ‘My requests and enquiries’ section of My Norfolk, these will be deleted in accordance with relevant Service’s privacy notice except if the account is older than one month and does not have any requests or enquiries. In this case, the account will be deleted automatically at the end of that period. If you would like to create a new request or enquiry and your account has been deleted, please register again to enable you to log a request or enquiry

For more details about your My Norfolk account: see https://my.norfolk.gov.uk/

Online payments

We use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology for online payments. a standard supported by major internet browsers. We protect your transactions by leading technologies and encryption software. All of your personal and payment card details are protected using 128 bit encryption when transmitted over the internet.

Our online credit and debit card processing is undertaken by HSBC.

Customer website feedback

Customers can give us feedback about our website, online information and transactions, either by contacting us via a web form (see 'Contact us'), or using the online feedback facility as follows:

GovMetric provides an optional feedback facility which customer can access from the bottom corner of any page on our website, and then rate and give feedback on that page. Contact details are optional, and are only used to contact the person about their feedback at their request. The results are processed by ROL Solutions Ltd (who act on behalf of GovMetric) and are accessed by the Customer Services team at Norfolk County Council. Neither the County Council nor the service providers pass any personal information to anyone else
The information provided is used to build an overall picture of the general locations of people who use the website (ie via postcode) and their experiences so we can make our website usable and useful to all our visitors
HotJar provides an optional feedback facility on the Norfolk Community Directory which customers can access from the bottom of any page, and then rate and give feedback on their experience. Contact details (email address) are optional and are only used to contact the person about their feedback, if required

More information about HotJar and your privacy

Email alerts and newsletters

We use Sitecore Email Experience Manager to deliver our email newsletters and alert services. After you register your email address, any messages you receive will be relevant to the service you originally signed up for. You have the option to subscribe to additional County Council newsletters or you can unsubscribe at any time by following the links in each email we send.

Live chat

We use live chat software on our website, this is provided by Click4Assistance, a 3rd party UK based Software Company.

Information regarding how the data is processed and stored can be viewed here

External links

Our website contains links to other external websites but, please be aware, this privacy notice only applies only to our site. So you should always take care when you are moving to another site and read the privacy statement of any site which collects personal information. Norfolk County Council accepts no responsibility or liability for these sites.

We do not pass on any personal information you have given us to any other site except in the case of online payments where we transfer your details to HSBC, our online payments partner, and you enter your credit or debit card details on their secure website or when this is set out in the Cookies section of this privacy notice.

You should also be aware that communications with Norfolk County Council (including online transactions) may be subject to monitoring and recording only for purposes permitted by the Telecommunications (Lawful Business Practice) (Interception of Communications) Regulations 2000 in order to prevent or detect a crime, or investigate or detect the unauthorised use of the service.

Changes to this notice

We may amend this privacy notice at any time so please review it frequently. The date below will be amended each time this notice is updated.

This notice was updated 27 May 2021.