If you are a member of the public and decide to access the Council’s website, please be assured that we do not capture and/or store any personal information about you but merely log your internet enabler’s IP address because this is automatically recognized by the Council’s web server. IP addresses are not linked to any personal data, so unless you are formally contacting us by email or completing an online form you will retain your anonymity.
When you email us or complete one of our online forms we will record your email address and any other information you provide voluntarily to us. Your data is treated confidentially and will be used only for the purpose or purposes for which you have provided it.
Furthermore, unless the Council are required to disclose it by law or are permitted to do so, your data will not be passed to any third parties or shared with other departments for the Council for any other purposes unless you have indicated or have previously indicated that you have no objection to us doing so.
However, please be aware that if you post offensive, inappropriate or objectionable content information on the Council’s website we may use your personal information to stop such behaviour continuing. If we reasonably believe that you are or may be in breach of the law, we may use your personal information to inform relevant third parties about your behaviour and the content you have posted. If you are 16 or under you will need to get your parent’s or guardian’s consent before providing personal information to us.
Any personal information you provide will be retained by the Council only for as long as it is reasonably necessary for the relevant purpose for which you provided it or for as long as is necessary and reasonable in the circumstances and also to enable the Council fulfil any statutory or regulatory requirements.
This statement may be updated from time to time.
A cookie is a small text file that some websites send to your computer’s hard drive every time you visit them. The main purpose of the cookies is to prepare a customized Web experience for users. When you enter a website, you may be asked to provide certain information such as your name and interests. This information can be packaged into a cookie and sent to your web browser which stores it for later use.
Bedford Borough Council’s website relies on cookies to: give insight into how useful our website is to our users, so that it can be updated and improved based on your needs; and to remember the notifications you’ve seen so that we don’t show them to you again. Our cookies cannot read other data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. We do not use cookies for collecting personal user information.
Bedford Borough council uses Google Analytics to see how visitors use the sites so that we can make the site more focused on their needs. To do this, the site will collect anonymous details of visitor behaviour patterns and usage statistics, whenever users visit any of the Council’s webpages. The information gathered helps the council to improve our online services, and is not used to determine the identity of our visitors.
The cookies used on the Bedford Borough Council website are as follows:
You can adjust your computer to accept all, some or alternatively, not to accept any cookies at all. However, disabling or even partially disabling cookies on the Council’s website may have an impact on your web experience, and possibly restrict or even preclude the Council from being able to contact and assist you in certain circumstances.
The majority of browsers (ie Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, etc) allow for universal privacy setting which are applied to all websites visited, when using that browser. Differing browsers offer differing ways to manage cookies, which is done via the browsers privacy settings. The help function within your browser should be able to assist you with this. Further information about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set as well as how to manage them, can be found by visiting the ICO website