Privacy Notice

Bolton Council is supporting the 2 year free funded childcare as part of the Government’s National Programme for providing your 2 year old an early year’s educational place.

This process requires us to gather specific information about you and your child, to enable us identify eligibility. To do this it will be necessary to complete an online form that is hosted by our partner Capita.

Capita are acting as our data processor and the information you provide on the form will be returned to the Council. This information will then be used to carry out the required eligibility check to ensure that you are able to receive the relevant funding.

Once used to identify that you and your child are eligible, the information you provide will be retained to administer the funding. The information you provide may also be used in a de-identified format for statistical purposes, to identify volume of uptake of the funding and to improve the service provided. None of the information you provide will be used to make decisions about you or your child, other than already outlined above.

The Council will share specific information provided on your form and any matters relating to funding internally and with commissioned partners. These will consist of Bolton Families Service, Children Centre' s and Outreach Workers who have been commissioned by Bolton Council and are working with Children Centres. These services may contact you to provide assistance with your application or with finding a nursery place.

Confirmation of approval of funding may also be shared with educational providers who you have applied to. This will be restricted to the providers that you have applied to, and is to confirm that funding is in place. No other information will be shared with them.

General information

The Council shares your personal information only for the reasons set out above, unless the law requires or permits us to share it for another reason, or for example, this is necessary to protect you or others from harm.

Your personal information will be handled securely, strictly on a need to know basis only by those specifically authorised to do so and will not be kept longer than is necessary. All information will be held securely and in compliance with the Data Protection Act 1998.

Online Application

Please be aware that only the legal guardian for the child being claimed for is allowed to set up the account. This restriction is necessary as the notification regarding the approval for the funding will be sent to the applicant at the email or postal address provided.

When completing the online application you will be asked to provide an email address that you use frequently, as we will provide notification of your account being set up. There are some inherent risks when using email and the Council has tried to reduce these as much as possible.

You will also be asked to confirm your preferred way for us to reach you. You can change or update the method we use to contact you by contacting us on families@bolton.gov.uk or by updating your account.

By clicking on the link below, this will take you through to our partner Capita who will gather the information on Bolton Council’s behalf. By creating an account you are confirming that the information you provide can be used by the Council to carry out the required eligibility check and can be used as outlined above. Any information you provide for this purpose will be the responsibility of Bolton Council as the Data Controller.

Your rights

Details of how Bolton Council handles personal data and your rights to see the information we hold about you can be viewed here. Should you wish to view the full Privacy Notice for Bolton Council, you may view it here.

Should you wish to withdraw your consent at any time you may do so by contacting the Families Information Service.

Email: families@bolton.gov.uk Phone: 01204 332125 / 338756.

You have the right to ask the Council for personal information held about you and details of how to do this can be found here.

Electronic Communications

Unless encrypted, email messages passing over the internet are not secure and could be intercepted and read by someone else. Please bear this in mind when deciding what information to include in any email messages you intend to send to Bolton Council.

Monitoring: The Council automatically monitors both outgoing and incoming email communications. You should therefore be aware that if you send an email to a person within the Council it will be subject to monitoring for lawful business purposes and will be stored and disposed of in accordance with the Council's archiving/back up policies.

Security and Viruses: Although the Council virus scans incoming and outgoing emails (including file attachments) it cannot guarantee that the content of an email communication or any file attachment is virus free or has not been intercepted or amended as it passes over the internet. The onus is on the recipient to check the communication is virus-free. The Council accepts no responsibility for any damage caused by receiving emails from our email systems and/or hosted domains.

Access: As a public authority, the Council is subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. Under this legislation the Council may be required to disclose the content of an email (or a response to it) unless the information it contains is protected from disclosure under an exemption in the Act.

Should you wish to view the full Privacy Notice for Bolton Council, you may view it here.

Over-claiming hours

In the case of over-claiming hours, we may need to share the names of the childcare settings that your child attends stating the amount of hours that are being claimed. This will only be shared with providers that your child is registered as attending.

If you have a concern about the way we are collecting or using your personal data, you should raise your concern with us in the first instance or directly to the Information Commissioner’s Office at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/