Privacy policy

We are committed to protecting your privacy in line with the Data Protection Act 2018.  Any personal data collected through this website will be treated as confidential in line with the principles of the Data Protection Act 2018. 

This privacy policy tells you what to expect when HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland (HMICS) collects your personal information.

Why do we collect personal data?

We gather this information in order to:

• improve the site by monitoring how you use it
• respond to any feedback you send us, if you've asked us to
• send out email alerts to those who have requested them
• record and/or publish your response to a survey or consultation

The personal data you send us can only be viewed by authorised people in HMICS.

What data do we collect?

1. Visitors to our websites

We use a third party service, Google Analytics, to collect information on how you use the site, using cookies and page tagging techniques.

The information we - and Google - collect doesn't identify anyone and is kept for a maximum of 38 months. If we do want to collect personally identifiable information through the site, we will be up front about it.

2. Email alerts

We collect your email address, name and subscription preferences when you sign up to our email alerts. We also track how our emails are used - for example whether you open them and which links you click on.

If you've signed up for email alerts, you can unsubscribe at any time. Once you have unsubscribed, your details will be deleted immediately from the system.

3. Feedback

If you contact us asking a question or giving feedback, we collect your email address and any other personal data contained in your message. If you contact us asking for information, we may need to contact other government bodies to find that information.

4. Consultations

We collect names and email addresses with every response we receive.

Email addresses are used to send an acknowledgement of response following submission. They may also be used to contact you in the future in relation to the consultation exercise if you give consent to be contacted.

Where permission is given, we publish responses. We include personal data where permission has been given to do so. We never publish email or postal addresses.

Links to other websites

When we link to other websites, we encourage you to read the privacy policy statements contained on those sites.

Your rights

You have a right of access to any personal data we hold about you, by making a Subject Access Request (SAR).

In addition, if you believe that the data we hold is inaccurate or incomplete you can ask us to update our records. If you are unhappy with the way in which we process your personal data you can request that we stop or restrict the processing we complete using your personal data or ask us to delete the personal data we hold about you.

Find out more about your rights on the Information Commissioner's site.

In some circumstances we may not be able to comply with your request. This is because some of these rights are conditional and can only be applied in certain circumstances and/or where there is no compelling reason to continue to process your personal data.

Contact

Email: hmic@gov.scot

Complaints

If you feel we have been unable, or unwilling, to resolve your information rights concern, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). The ICO are the supervisory authority responsible for data protection in the UK.

For further information, including independent data protection advice and information in relation to your rights, you can contact the Information Commissioner at:

The Information Commissioner 
Wycliffe House 
Water Lane 
Wilmslow 
Cheshire 
SK9 5AF

Tel: 08456 30 60 60 
Website: www.ico.gov.uk)

You can also report any concerns here: https://ico.org.uk/concerns/handling/

Cookies and website traffic analysis

When you enter this website your computer will automatically be issued with 'cookies'. Cookies are text files which identify users' computers to the server that host the website. The website then creates "session" cookies to store some of the preferences of users moving around the website, e.g. retaining a text-only preference. Cookies in themselves do not identify individual users but identify only the computer used and they are deleted on departure from the website.

This site places small cookies onto your computer to collect information about how you browse. These cookies aren't used to identify you personally.

You will normally see a message on the site before we store a cookie on your computer.

Find out more about how to manage cookies.

Measuring site usage

This website uses third-party cookies to measure use of the website including number of visitors, how frequently pages are viewed, and the city and country of origin of users. This helps to determine what is popular and can influence future content and development. For this purpose, we use Google Analytics to measure and analyse usage of the website. The information collected will include IP Address, pages visited, browser type and operating system. The data will not be used to identify any user personally.

Users have the opportunity to set their computers to accept all cookies, to notify them when a cookie is issued, or not to receive cookies at any time. The last of these means that certain personalised services cannot then be provided to that user.

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics to collect information about how you use the HMICS website. We do this to help make sure the site is meeting your needs and to help us make improvements.

We store information about:

• the pages you visit and how long you spend on each page
• how you got to the HMICS website
• what you click on while you're visiting the HMICS website

Any information we get is received in a way that we can't identify anyone by it. For example, we never receive your name or address.

We don't make any attempt to find out the identities of people visiting the HMICS website, and we don't allow Google to do this either.

All information we get through cookies and analytics will be treated in confidence. We will never sell, trade or give your details to third parties, unless we're required to do it by law.

Find out more about security and privacy in Google Analytics.

Opt out

You can opt out of Google analytics cookies.

Log files

Log files stored on the web server allow the recording and analysis of users' use of the website. Log files do not contain any personal information.

Copyright

The information and publications on the HMICS website are subject to Crown Copyright. Material may be reproduced without formal permission or charge for personal or in-house use only.

For other use or if in doubt, further information is available from http://www.hmso.gov.uk/copyright.htm.

Guidance notes on publishing and copyright, including those from the Queen's Printer for Scotland, are available at http://www.hmso.gov.uk/guides.htm.

Information collection

HMICS is the sole owner of the information collected on www.hmics.scot.

Sharing

Though we make every effort to preserve user privacy, we may need to disclose personal information when required by law wherein we have a good-faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a current judicial proceeding, a court order or legal process served on our Web site.

Links

This Website contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we, HMICS, are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this website.

Notification of changes

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this website, and other places we deem appropriate so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.

Publication scheme

Please read our publication scheme.

Retention and disposal of information

HMICS operate a Records Retention and Disposal Schedule to ensure that information is not kept for any longer than necessary in accordance with the principles of the Data Protection Act.

Contact information

If you have any questions or suggestions regarding our privacy policy, please contact us