Arboriculture and woodland privacy notice

What this page is for

This privacy notice provides information on how Norfolk County Council’s (NCC) Arboriculture and Woodland Service uses your personal information to provide services directly to yourself and generally to Norfolk in its capacity as a public authority.

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

Further details

We also provide further details regarding:

• Who we are
• How long we use your information for
• Your rights under the UK GDPR and
• How to exercise them

You can see this information in our general privacy notice on our website or you can ask us for a copy of this information.

What we use your personal information for

We use your personal information primarily to manage NCC’s Arboriculture and Woodland Service including:

• Responding to enquiries about trees, either by making a visit or giving a written response
• Contacting landowners where trees are not in our ownership when trees have been identified as dangerous and requiring action. This is usually as a result of carrying out surveys for ash dieback and other tree diseases on the highway network.
• Monitoring and administering tree planting or rooting (natural regeneration or seeding) projects and grant schemes which we are running (this may include contacting you)
• Research relating to community tree projects
• Administering the Community Tree Nursery Grant
• Managing volunteers at Gressenhall Community Tree Nursery
• Administering the Bussey’s Community Tree Grant and the Jubilee Trees for Norfolk project and other tree pack schemes.

We also use this information to assess the quality of our services and evaluate and improve our policies and procedures.

We may also use information in other ways compatible with the above. 

The information we collect and use

The information we may collect and use may include your:

• Personal details – your name
• Contact details – your address and/or email address, postcode, telephone number
• Financial details (to make and/or receive payments to/from you where applicable)

We may also collect and use information about:

• Health data (to make reasonable adjustments for disabilities)

This information is classed as “special category data” under the UK GDPR. We may only collect these data when it is relevant and for the purposes described above.

The UK GDPR includes safeguards to protect the use of your special category data and criminal conviction data. Further details can be found on our Special category data and criminal offences data policy, which sets out our procedures for compliance with the principles of the UK GDPR and the retention and erasure of this information.

Who provides this information

The information we hold includes information you have provided to us.

We may also receive information from:

• Other NCC departments, including Highways and other services with trees on their land, or with land management responsibilities
• County councillors
• HM Land Registry
• Parish councils
• District councils
• Research partners

How the law protects you and the legal basis for processing your information

We have legal grounds to process this information because:

• It is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest.  This includes tasks under the:
  • Highways Act 1980
  • Health and Safety at Work Act 1974
  • Town and Country Planning Act 1990
  • The Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 (as amended)
  • Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982
  • The Occupiers Liability Act 1984
  • The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regs 1992
  • The Hedgerow Regulations 1997
  • Forestry Act 1967
  • Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981
  • The Countryside and Rights of Way (CRoW) Act 2000

• It is necessary for the performance of a contract (eg lease, licence, service and maintenance, goods, volunteer agreement)

Who we share your information with

We may also share your personal information with other organisations and public bodies, in particular:

• Other NCC departments, including Highways and other services with trees on their land, or with land management responsibilities
• County councillors
• County councils who are our partners on projects
• District councils
• Parish councils
• Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
• Research partners
• Trees Outside Woodlands project partners

We share this information without your specific consent as it is reasonable and necessary to do so to fulfil our public tasks or it is otherwise in the substantial public interest to do so.  The law imposes safeguards to protect your privacy in these circumstances.

We will also share your information, subject to contractual and other legal safeguards, with organisations contracted by NCC to provide a service to the council or directly to you.  These service providers are known as data processors and have a legal obligation under UK GDPR and to NCC to look after your personal information and only use it for providing that service. These organisations include:

• Norse Group companies
• Tree surgeons
• Forest Research
• Project partners (when they are involved in helping to assess grant applications)
• ESRI (online survey provider)

Finally, we may also share your information across different NCC departments, where it is necessary for our public tasks or functions to do so.

How long we keep your information for

We keep your information in accordance with our retention and destruction schedule.

If we need to use your information for research or reports, your information will be anonymised and any information taken from notes (handwritten or typed) during any consultation sessions will be securely destroyed. The information will continue to be used in a summarised and anonymised form in any research reports or papers that are published. The anonymised information in the papers may be of historic interest and may be held in public archives indefinitely.

How we keep your information

The information is securely stored electronically on the NCC’s records management system. Additionally, information is securely stored in other mediums, including email accounts and in paper files.

We do not process your information outside of the European Economic Area.

Automated decision making

We do not make automated decisions about you and your family.

This notice was updated on 5 September 2023