Customer Contact Centre privacy notice

As part of the Contact Centre's customer service process, Oxford City Council collects and processes personal data relating to residents, customers, service users, businesses, visitors and other individuals who contact the Council.

We are committed to being transparent about how we collect and use that data and to meeting our data protection obligations.

This statement is in compliance with current requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation 2018.

Information we collect

We collect a range of information about you, including:

• name
• address
• email address
• telephone number
• customer reference numbers
• your Council Tax, Benefits, Housing or other Council service reference numbers where applicable
• details of enquiries, requests, complaints, compliments and feedback
• telephone call recordings
• information provided during webchat, email or other correspondence
• information relating to the service you are contacting us about
• any supporting information or documents you provide

Data will be stored in a variety of places including:

• telephony and call recording systems (third party provider)
• webchat recording systems (third party provider)
• email systems
• electronic document management systems
• service-specific case management systems
• secure network drives and cloud-based business systems approved by the Council

Why we collect personal information

It is in the public interest that Oxford City Council collects and processes your personal data to provide local authority services, respond to enquiries, handle requests and complaints, deliver statutory functions and improve customer service. 

Processing data from residents, customers and service users allows us to:

• respond to enquiries and requests
• verify identity where necessary
• deliver Council services
• maintain accurate records
• monitor service performance
• train and support staff
• investigate complaints and service issues
• prevent and detect fraud

Telephone calls may be recorded for quality monitoring, staff training, safeguarding purposes, investigation of complaints, and the prevention or detection of crime or fraud.

Who we share information with

Your information may be shared internally for the purposes of delivering Oxford City Council services and managing customer enquiries. This includes:

• contact centre staff
• service departments and managers
• authorised support staff
• other Oxford City Council employees who require access to the information to perform their duties

For some services we may share information with external partners or specialists involved in delivering services on behalf of the Council. For example, we use:

• Orbis to take calls from residents during our ‘out of hours’ period
• Daktela for our telephone contract
• GovMetric to send out feedback surveys to some of our customers

How long we keep your data

Call recordings and Webchat interactions will be retained only for as long as necessary for operational, legal, audit and regulatory purposes and then securely deleted or disposed of in accordance with the Council's retention requirements.

These recordings will be kept for 6 months after which records will be deleted.

See Oxford City Council's Records Retention Schedule and Records Retention Policy.