Data privacy and protection

The Health Insight Survey is being carried out by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and funded by NHS England.

The ONS is the Controller of personal data collected during the survey. Information collected during the survey, including your personal data, will not be shared with NHS England.

The ONS is the government's largest independent producer of statistics. We collect information about the UK's society and economy, which provides evidence for policy- and decision-making, and for directing resources to where they are needed most.

Any information you provide in response to this survey will be legally protected and treated as confidential in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics.

The ONS will only hold the data collected through this survey and link to other admin or survey data sources for as long as it remains useful for statistical research and production.

The ONS will use your data to produce anonymous statistics that serve the public good. The ONS will link your information to other administrative or survey data sources, including but not limited to data collected as part of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey (CIS) and the Winter Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Study (Winter CIS), as well as to the Personal Demographic Service (PDS) data that ONS holds.

The ONS takes the responsibility to keep your personal information secure very seriously. As such, we take every reasonable precaution to ensure your information is protected from loss, misuse and unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration and destruction.

These precautions include:

• appropriate physical security of our offices
• controlled access to computer systems
• use of secure, encrypted internet connections when collecting personal information

All personal data will only be kept for as long as it is needed for the purposes set out above.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider:

• the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data
• the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data
• the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means (such as using anonymous data)
• the applicable legal requirements

When the ONS processes your personal data, we will do so under the lawful basis of:

Article 6(1)(e) processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller

and for special category data,

Article 9(2)(j) Data processed for reasons of archiving, research and statistics in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018 Schedule 1(4) research.

The ONS may provide access to information from this survey to accredited researchers for research purposes. When we do this, the information will not identify you directly and we only do it when it is lawful and ethical to do so.

The ONS will provide this through access to the Integrated Data Service (IDS). The IDS is a secure cross-government service, for which the Office for National Statistics is the lead delivery partner. It gives accredited or approved researchers restricted access to de-identified, unpublished data to work on accredited research projects for the public good.

The ONS sometimes shares selected information with our service providers to help us run our surveys. When we do this, we only share the personal data needed for the survey and make sure there are robust controls in place that meet our obligations as data controllers under data protection laws. When we engage a service provider, they can only use the data as we tell them to and not for any other purpose.

For this survey, we work with other organisations that help us get in touch. Our service providers for this survey are:

GOV.UK Notify, a government service that helps us send emails or letters to you. For GOV.UK Notify's Privacy notice, please visit their website.

Under data protection law, you have several rights over your personal information.  You have the right to:

• ask for a copy of any information we hold about you, although this is not an absolute right, and we may not be able to provide information: we will tell you why if this is the case

• ask for any information we hold about you to be changed if it is inaccurate, although this is not an absolute right, and we may not need to change your information: we will tell you why if this is the case

• ask us to consider restricting our use of your information, although this is not an absolute right, and we may need to continue to use your information in the interests of public health –we will tell you why if this is the case

• object to us using any information we hold about you, although this is not an absolute right, and we may need to continue to use your information  – we will tell you why if this is the case

• delete any information we hold about you, although this is not an absolute right, and we may need to continue to use your information – we will tell you why if this is the case

• ask us, in appropriate circumstances, to transfer your personal information to a recognised health authority in another country

• ask us, in appropriate circumstances, to transfer your personal information to a recognised health authority both in the UK and in other countries, but also to you or your private health provider in a machine-readable format.

For more information on the rights you hold and how to exercise them for personal data processed as part of this survey, please see the ONS data protection pages.

If you have any concerns about how the ONS use and protect your personal information or wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact the ONS Data Protection Officer by emailing DPO@Statistics.gov.uk or calling +44 345 601 3034.

The Information Commissioner's Office is the independent body tasked with regulating data protection within the UK. They can provide you with additional information regarding data protection and your rights and will deal with any complaints you may have regarding our use of your data. They can be contacted by calling +44 303 123 1113 or by writing to:

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow

Further information on what the ONS uses data for is available on the Data Strategy page of the ONS website.

Further information on the ethical framework and a full list of accredited processors are available on the UK Statistics Authority website.

Further information on how we provide access to data for research purposes is also available on the UK Statistics Authority website.

If you have a question about how the ONS processes your personal data or want to find out more about your rights under data protection legislation, please see the Data protection page on the ONS website.