Worcestershire County Council is the controller for the Low Carbon Opportunities Programme. The Low Carbon Opportunities Programme is funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). For more information about the funding, visit GOV.UK - England 2014 to 2020 European Structural and Investment Funds. 

The programme processes personal information in order to carry out delivery and administration of the Low Carbon Opportunities Programme either directly or jointly with partners and commissioned private and third sector providers. This includes:

• processing your business support application
• monitoring and assessing the consultants delivery of the service
• conducting data analysis on the users of this service to support the development of new services
• maintain fraud prevention
• contacting you in the delivery of project services
• provide progress reports to the funding organisation

You will be contacted by one of the consultants working on our behalf:

• Carbon Smart
• Isle Utilities

Our consultants are required to collect information about you and your business when you voluntarily complete business support applications and feedback forms and make this data available to Worcestershire County Council when requested.

The programme processes personal information which is relevant to individual cases which may include, but is not limited to, the following personal data:

• personal details – e.g. name / age / address
• contact information – e.g. telephone numbers / email address
• personal reference numbers – e.g. National Insurance, Company House number
• employment details
• financial details – bank account details

The legal bases for processing this personal information are:

• contract for the supply of services
• compliance with a legal obligation
• tasks carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority

We may need to share the personal information you have given to us or we’ve collected about you with partner organisations where relevant Worcestershire County Council is required to monitor the performance of the project and provide evidence to meet the ERDF funding, monitoring and audit requirements. These include but are not limited to:

• Worcestershire Business Central
• Worcester City District Council
• Malvern Hills District Council
• Wychavon District Council
• Redditch Borough Council
• Bromsgrove District Council
• Wyre Forest District Council
• Herefordshire & Worcestershire Chamber of Commerce
• Worcestershire Local Enterprise Partnership
• The Programme funding body
• The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
• The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy

Information will only ever be shared when it is strictly necessary to help us provide effective services and you may have the right to refuse.  We will not pass it onto any other parties unless required to do so by law or in all reasonable circumstances the disclosure is fair and warranted for the purposes of processing or subject to a data protection exemption.

We have specific data sharing agreements in place with local agencies and sometimes the law requires that we may have to pass your details on to a third party, for example, to prevent crime.

We will hold your data until at least 31st December 2033, in line with ERDF document retention guidance for 2014-2020 ERDF projects.

More information about our retention periods can be found in our summary Disposal Schedule (Excel file).

Please note stated retention periods may be subject to any legal holds imposed under the Inquiries Act 2005 that may concern the information and override standard retention periods.

The information you provide will be used by the Programme Consultants listed below in order to deliver the programme support. Each of the consultants used has their own privacy notice, to request these please use the email addresses provided below:

• Carbon Smart: lcop@carbonsmart.co.uk
• Isle Utilities: info@isleutilities.com

You are entitled to a copy, or a description, of the personal data we hold that relates to you, subject to lawful restrictions. Please go to our Make a Data Protection Request page to find out how to make a request.

You may be entitled to rectification, restriction, objection, and erasure of your personal information depending on the service and legal basis. Please in the first instance contact dataprotection@worcestershire.gov.uk to exercise these Information Rights or call the main Worcestershire County Council contact telephone number of 01905 765765.

Please see our overarching Privacy Notice for further contact details and if you have a complaint about your information rights.

We keep this Privacy Notice under regular review and we will place any updates on this web page. This Notice was last updated on 28 May 2021.