Privacy notice and data protection

This privacy notice is to be read in conjunction with the full privacy notice, which can be found on the Council’s privacy notice data protection webpage.

This privacy notice sets out how the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames will use and process your information. 

What type of information is collected about you?

We collect the personal information below when you submit an application for free school meals:

• Parent’s full name

• Parent’s home address and contact details, including a telephone number and email address

• Parent’s date of birth

• Parent’s national insurance number and details of benefits claimed

• Child’s name

• Child’s date of birth and school attended.

We may also collect information from other organisations such as the benefits agencies.

For children and families resident in the Royal Borough of Kingston, we carry out a data matching exercise to identify children who might be entitled to benefit-related free school meals.

How we use your personal data

The information you provide is used for the following purposes:

• To assess your eligibility for free school meals against the Department for Education criteria

• To notify your child’s school of their entitlement to free school meals

• To provide food vouchers during school holidays

• To deal with complaints or concerns.

Who your information may be shared with:

We may share some of your information, for example your name and address, internally with other departments in the Council if this:

• helps you to access services more easily

• promotes the more efficient and cost effective delivery of services

• helps recover monies owed to the council.

We match Council Tax data with Electoral Registration records. 

We are required by law to participate in National Fraud Initiative (NFI) data matching exercises. Council Tax information may be provided to the Audit Commission for NFI purposes and will be used for cross-system and cross-authority comparison for fraud prevention and detection

We will also share our data with companies who undertake data matching exercises for Single Person Discount, this is to identify discrepancies. We share our data through LOCTA - the Local Authority Council Tax data sharing hub, who locate debtors who no longer reside in the council. For some debts, we also use external bailiff collection.  We use an external provider to process our online claims and to identify changes in circumstances.

The legal basis for processing your information

We collect and use personal information under the following lawful basis:

• UK GDPR article 6(1)(e) – processing is necessary to perform a task in the public interest or for our official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law

We are required by law to provide free school meals to eligible children in Kingston under Section 512 of the Education Act 1996. The local authority has the “general power of competence” under Section 1 of the Localism Act 2011 to auto-enrol children eligible for free school meals.  

How long will we keep your information

We will retain your information for the period in which your information is being used for service provision or for our wider functions including debt collection. We have legal authority to process your information; your right to be forgotten does not apply to our functions and services. 

All records relating to the administration of free school meals are retained for a maximum period of 7 years from creation.