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Privacy notice – Environmental Crime (Enforcement) Team

​Information about how and when the Environmental Crime (Enforcement) Team processes personal information about you.​

Our contact details

Name: Environmental Crime (Enforcement) Team
Address: 1A Eros House, Brownhill Road, Catford, London, SE6 2EG
Phone Number:020 8314 2170
E-mail: envirocrime.enforcement@lewisham.gov.uk

What we do

Environmental Crime (Enforcement) Team provides a range of law enforcement and investigatory services as well as licensing forecourts for street trading. All of the team’s work is carried out under statute and some of the work is a statutory duty.

The team is responsible for:

  • abandoned and untaxed vehicles (investigation and removal)

  • investigating waste offences, including flytipping, duty of care and litter

  • enforcing compliance with dog-control matters including dog fouling and dogs on leads, as created by our public spaces protection order 2018

  • litter control and carrying out of litter patrols

  • licensing of forecourt street trading and taking enforcement action in relation to unlicensed trading and licence breaches

  • proactive enforcement operations for detection and deterrent of waste offences etc

  • issuing enforcement notices, fixed penalty notices, warning letters etc

  • carrying out PACE interviews and the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and interviewing witnesses, including taking witness statements

  • prosecuting offenders in the criminal courts and making claims for debt in the county court.

What information we collect

To conduct investigations, it may be necessary to collect and process the following information:

  • name

  • address

  • telephone number

  • email address

  • National Insurance Number (Licence Applicants)

  • passport (licence applicants)

  • driving licence (licence applicants)

  • date of birth

  • car registration details

  • any information found as evidence in fly tipped material

How we get the personal information and why we have it

Most of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by you for one of the following reasons

We predominantly collect information from you when you fill in any forms, are interviewed (including under caution), contact us in writing, speak to us face to face, on the phone, by email, or communicate with us in any other way.

In addition, some of the information about you may be retrieved as evidence during a physical investigation of a site such as receipts, address labels and letters.

Some of the information we hold about you may come from third party sources such as the Police, DVLA, Environment Agency other Council departments and other third-party witnesses and partners.

We also receive personal information indirectly, from the following sources in the following scenarios

The primary objective of the Enforcement Team is to ensure the prevention of illegal dumping, transporting or handling of waste and to ensure that any instances or allegations of these are investigated and dealt with effectively, to this end the Enforcement Team may process any personal information indirectly held by the council or other agencies in order to prevent and detect crime from DVLA, Home office, Occupation, Housing Provider.

We use the information that you have given us in order to

Examples of areas where we may collect personal information indirectly to fulfilling our function include the prevention and detection of fly tipping, abandoned vehicles, antisocial behaviour related to littering, duty of care investigations (Commercial or Household).

We may share this information with Police, DVLA, Environment Agency other Council departments and other third-party witnesses and partners. Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the lawful bases we rely on for processing this information are:

(a) Your consent. (You are able to remove your consent at any time. You can do this by contacting dpa@lewisham.gov.uk)
(b) We have a legal obligation.
(c) We need it to perform a public task.
(d) We have a legitimate interest.

How we store your personal information

Your information is securely stored.

We will only retain your personal information on our electronic database up to 3 years or for as long as necessary to fulfil the purpose we collect it for. We will then dispose your information by deleting the data.

Your data protection rights

Under data protection law, you have rights including:

  • Your right of access - you have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.
  • Your right to rectification - you have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.
  • Your right to erasure - you have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.
  • Your right to restriction of processing - you have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
  • Your right to object to processing - you have the the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
  • Your right to data portability - you have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.

Please contact us at envirocrime.enforcement@lewisham.gov.uk, 020 8314 2170 and or 1A Eros House, Brownhill Road, Catford, London, SE6 2EG if you wish to make a request.

Agencies we might share the information with

We may share information with:

  • the Metropolitan Police

  • Environment Agency

  • other law enforcement agencies and police forces

  • other councils 

  • Lewisham Homes and local housing associations

  • Redcorn Ltd (abandoned vehicle contractor).

Why we process the information

We process information to support:

  • service delivery
  • service improvement