Lancashire Environment Record Network

To comply with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), where personal data relating to a data subject is collected, Lancashire County Council would like to provide you with the following details.

Identity and contact details of the data controller

  • Lancashire County Council, PO Box 78 County Hall, Fishergate, Preston, Lancashire, PR1 8XJ

Contact details of the data protection officer

  • Our Data Protection Officer is Paul Bond. You can contact him at dpo@lancashire.gov.uk or Lancashire County Council, PO Box 78 County Hall, Fishergate, Preston, Lancashire, PR1 8XJ

Purposes for processing

The Lancashire Environment Record Network (LERN) is the 'local environmental record centre (LERC)' for the county of Lancashire (including Blackburn with Darwen and Blackpool). LERN is a member of the Association of Local Environmental Record Centres. The record centre stores and provides access to details of Lancashire's rich environment: its biodiversity, geodiversity and landscape. The information we hold is provided by our partner organisations, hundreds of groups, highly dedicated expert volunteer recorders and professional ecologists. Without LERCs, this valuable data resource would not be made available to local and national users promptly and in a suitable format.

The Biological Heritage Sites (BHS) system forms part of LERN and BHS is the name given in Lancashire to non-statutory wildlife sites of at least County significance. They are considered to form part of the suite of sites collectively referred to as "locally designated sites" in the National Planning Policy Framework and elsewhere as "local wildlife sites".

The Biological Heritage Site system was established by Lancashire County Council in September 1993 and developed in partnership with Lancashire Wildlife Trust and Natural England.

Biological Heritage Sites have an important role to play in meeting Lancashire County Council's duties, responsibilities, and priorities relating to the conservation of biodiversity.

BHS owner/manager information is collected and stored to, for example: allow access permission to be sought for carrying out ecological surveys to permit the system to be kept up to date; and to target advice and support to owners/managers to encourage favourable management of sites.

Category of personal data being processed

  1. Personal data (information relating to a living, identifiable individual)

Legal basis for processing personal data

The legal basis for processing your personal data, in accordance with the UK GDPR is:

  1. Public Task: the processing is necessary for you to perform a task in the public interest or for your official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law.

Lancashire County Council relies on UK GDPR Article 6 (1) (e) by virtue of the following legislation: National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949, Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 and the Environment Act 2021.

Legal basis for processing special categories of personal data

Not applicable.

Recipients of the data

Your name may be passed as part of a biological record to recognised third party specialists or experts in particular taxonomic fields to aid in record verification and validation. Your personal data may also be included in normal LERC operational agreements with other data controllers such as with adjacent Local Environmental Records Centres (LERCs) or National Recording Schemes and Societies (e.g., Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI)).

Personal data may also be shared on a case-by-case basis with partners and other organisations, who are working to support the BHS system. This could include:

  • Local Councils
  • The Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside
  • Natural England
  • Others who are providing advice to BHS owners and managers.

Information we share

Name and/or Organisation, Address, Phone Number and Email.

Any transfers to another country

No

Retention periods

Lancashire County Council will only store your information for as long as is legally required or in situations where there is no legal retention period, they will follow established best practice.

File type Description Security Retention period

Email

Emails held in Outlook that haven't been exported or moved elsewhere.

Encryption used when emailing personal data to partners.

6 years before automatic deletion.

Spreadsheet

LERN data requestors' details are stored as part of invoicing.

Stored on secure LCC networks

3 years from completion of the LERN Data Request Form.

Recorder6 Database

Personal data (Name) associated with biological recordings.

Stored on secure LCC networks and a login is required to access.

In the case of assigning your name to a biological record, this will be held in perpetuity as it is best practice for the observer’s name to form part of the biological record, to aid verification. This is so that we are compliant with various legislation including The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006, The Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2010, etc. Further information can be found here: https://www.alerc.org.uk/uploads/7/6/3/3/7633190/accessing_biodiversity_data_through_your_lerc.pdf

Electronic files

Correspondence, records of communication and other information related to BHSs is stored electronically

Stored on secure LCC networks

Records are archived to form evidence of communication with landowners.

BHS Database records

Personal data and records of communication stored in the BHS database

Stored on secure LCC networks

Contact information will be removed one year from the date a landowner/land agent ceases to own/tenant/manage the Biological Heritage Site(s) they are associated with.

GIS shapefile

Boundaries showing extent of owner/manager interest are digitised and corresponding personal data stored within a GIS shapefile

Stored on secure LCC networks

Contact information will be removed one year from the date a landowner/land agent ceases to own/tenant/manage the Biological Heritage Site(s) they are associated with.

Your rights

You have certain rights under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), these are:

  • 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.

If you want to exercise any of these rights then you can do so by contacting:

Information Governance Team
Lancashire County Council
PO Box 78
County Hall
Preston
PR1 8XJ

Email: dpo@lancashire.gov.uk

To ensure that we can deal with your request as efficiently as possible you will need to include your current name and address, proof of identity (a copy of your driving licence, passport or two different utility bills that display your name and address), as much detail as possible regarding your request so that we can identify any information we may hold about you, this may include your previous name and address, date of birth and what council service you were involved with.

Further information

If you would like more information about the Lancashire Environment Record Network, please visit https://www.lancashire.gov.uk/lern/ If you can't find what you are looking for, please contact LERN@lancashire.gov.uk.

For more information about how we use personal information see Lancashire County Council's full privacy notice.

If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, you can contact the Information Governance team who will investigate the matter.

Lancashire County Council, PO Box 78 County Hall, Fishergate, Preston, Lancashire, PR1 8XJ or email: dataprotection@lancashire.gov.uk

If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are processing your personal data not in accordance with the law you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).