Privacy Notices - Accident and Incident Reporting Privacy Notice

As part of the health and safety process, Swindon Borough Council collects and processes personal data relating to internal and external accident and incident reporting. The Council is committed to being transparent about how it collects and uses that data and to meeting its data protection obligations.

A ‘privacy notice’ is a statement issued by an organisation which explains how personal and confidential data about individuals is collected, used and shared.

The Health and Safety Team collects a range of information about you concerning your accident or incident. 

This includes:

• your personal and contact details such as your name, job title, location, name of line manager, date of birth, gender, address and telephone number
• details of your accident or incident
• a record of an injury details
• details of any assistance provided including first aid
• collection of witness details and statements where applicable
• details of any supporting evidence
• a record of management investigations
• feedback information and recommendations

The Council collects this information via an accident and incident report form accessible to all employees via the staff intranet.

We will seek further information if applicable, from witnesses, first aiders or managers, to support the accident reporting process. 

Data will be stored electronically on SBC IT systems (including email). 

The Council will need to process data to undertake legislative requirements for accident and incident reporting and to monitor health and safety performance. 

Swindon Borough Council has a legitimate interest in processing personal data to support the health and safety monitoring of Council employees and to keep records of this process. Processing health and safety data allows the Health and Safety Team to manage the monitoring and evaluation of your health and safety.

Your data may be shared internally for the purposes of internal health and safety monitoring. This includes members of the Health and Safety team, management teams, the Insurance Department, the Human Resources Department, Occupational Health and union representatives for health and safety performance monitoring and compliance.

Your data may be shared externally for the purposes of health and safety legislative compliance with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) or on the request of staff or other appointed legal counsel.

We take the security of your data seriously.  We have internal policies and controls in place to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by our employees in the proper performance of their duties.

Accident and incident report data is held for up to 3 years after any accident or incident except where specific health and safety legislation requires health monitoring data to be kept for 40 years. Where children or young persons are involved in accidents or incidents, report data will be held until the eighteenth birthday and for a further 3 years. This will be in accordance with the Council’s Retention and Disposal Policy.

You have a number of rights. 

You can:

• access and obtain a copy of your data on request
• require the Council to change incorrect or incomplete data
• require the Council to delete or stop processing your data, for example where the data is no longer necessary for the purposes of processing
• object to the processing of your data where the Council is relying on its legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact the Council’s Data Protection Officer, Civic Offices, Euclid Street, Swindon SN1 2JH or email DataProtection@swindon.gov.uk.

If you believe that the Council has not complied with your data protection rights, you can complain to the Information Commissioner – www.ico.org.uk

You have a statutory obligation to cooperate and provide data to Swindon Borough Council for health and safety purposes.  However, if you do not provide the information, we may not be able to process your accident or incident report and fulfil our legislative requirements.

A yearly audit will take place on personal data to ensure that we remain legally compliant in accordance with current data protection legislation.

You are viewing the Privacy Notice for Accident and Incident Reporting.

Read the main Privacy Notice