Privacy notice – Register Office

Why we process your information

We are required by law to collect your personal information in order to register an event. The main pieces of legislation which govern the collection of registration information are the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, the Marriage Act 1949 and the Civil Partnership Act 2004.

You may be legally obliged to provide certain pieces of information by these acts, and other pieces of legislation. If you fail to provide information you are required to give us you may, amongst other things, be liable to a fine, or we may not be able to provide the service you are applying for, such as a marriage or a civil partnership.

Personal information may also be collected from you if you are make an application to this office, for example for a certificate or to correct information contained in a register entry.

Registration information is retained indefinitely as required by law. You can find more information about this on our general privacy notice.

Why we might share the information

We will only share information where there is a lawful basis to do so for the following reasons:

• Statistical or research purposes
• Administrative purposes by official bodies e.g. ensuring their records are up to date in order to provide services to the public
• Fraud prevention or detection, immigration and passport purposes

We provide a copy of any register entry to any applicant, provided they supply enough information to identify the entry concerned and pay the appropriate fee. The copy may only be issued in the form of a paper certified copy (a certificate). You can also make an application for a certificate to the General Register Office.

Indexes for events registered at this office are publicly available in order to help members of the public identify the registration record they might need. Indexes are available in paper format.

A copy of the information collected by a registration officer will also be sent to the Registrar General for England and Wales so that a central record of all registrations can be maintained.

Registration information held at this office may be shared with other organisations in the course of carrying out our functions, or to enable others to perform theirs.

Further information on data held by the registration service and a full list of the organisations with whom registration data is shared, the purpose and the lawful basis for sharing the data can be found on our list of processing activities for registrars, superintendent registrars and registration authorities. Alternatively, staff in our office will be able to provide the information.

Who to contact

The information you provide will be held and processed by registration officers for this registration district.

The superintendent registrar is a data controller for birth, marriage and death registrations and can be contacted at register.office@lewisham.gov.uk.

The local authority is a data controller for civil partnership registrations and can be contacted at register.office@lewisham.gov.uk.

The Registrar General for England and Wales is a joint data controller for birth, marriage, death and civil partnership registrations and can be contacted at the General Register Office, Trafalgar Road, Southport, PR8 2HH.

The Data Protection Officer is Stephen Williams. They can be contacted at dpo@lewisham.gov.uk.

If you have any questions or concerns about the collection, use or disclosure of your personal information please look at our main privacy statement.

You have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office about the way we are handling your personal information. Details on how you can do this can be found on their website.

Your rights

You have the right to request access to:

• to see the personal information we hold about you
• to be informed about the collection and use of your personal information
• for incorrect information to be corrected (where the law permits)
• to request us to restrict the processing of your personal information.

In certain circumstances you have the right to object to the processing of your personal information. Your information will not be subjected to automated decision-making.