Legal Services

This privacy notice relates to the Shared Legal Service. It should be read together with our general privacy notice, which provides more detail about how Manchester City Council processes personal information.

The information held include the names and addresses and contact details of individuals, including client officers, in relation to legal cases.

As part of our work, we also process other types of personal information, such as date of birth/age, nationality, relationship or connections with other individuals, financial information, images or sound, your connection with complaints, accidents or incidents including opinions or facts presented, personal information relating to employment, education as well as social care matters.

We process special category data such as racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, health information, sexual orientation information, information concerning a natural person’s sex life.

We also process information relating to criminal convictions and offences, such as the alleged commission of offences, proceedings for an offence committed or alleged to have been committed or the disposal of proceedings including sentencing.

We use your personal information to undertake legal work in respect of our clients’ functions and activities. Our clients include those internally from other departments within the Council, and those who we act for externally to the Council.

We use your personal information where required to comply with our legal obligations as part of our legal practice and in connection with regulatory activity.

Your personal data is used:

• where it is necessary for the performance of a contract (article 6 (1)(b) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (‘UK GDPR’).
• because it is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject such as complying with Court directions (article 6 (1)(c) of the UK GDPR);
• where it is necessary for the performance of a public task (article 6 (1)(e) of the UK GDPR);
• for providing legal services to our clients (article 6 (1)(f) of the UK GDPR) in pursuit of our legitimate interests where it is necessary to do so;

We may use special category data where it is necessary for legal case work and practice

• for carrying out obligations or rights in connection with employment and social security and social protection law (article 9(2)(b) of the UK GDPR);
• to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim (article 9(2)(f) of the UK GDPR);
• for reasons of substantial public interest (Article 9 (2) (g) of the UK GDPR);
• for purposes of preventative or occupational medicine, for the assessment of the working capacity of any employee, medical diagnosis, the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health or social care systems and services (article 9(2)(h) of UK GDPR).

Where we process personal data relating to criminal convictions and offence data or special category data which requires a processing condition under the Data Protection Act 2018, we rely on one or more of the processing conditions under Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018, including that:

• the processing is necessary for the exercise of a function conferred by an enactment or rule of law, and that it is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest, and/or
• the processing is necessary for the purpose of legal claims.

We hold personal information   provided by you. We sometimes receive information from other council departments, our external clients, other local authorities, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, legal representatives or other organisations such as Government departments or bodies, police and law enforcement agencies, or third parties for example outside agencies or claimants.

Your information may be shared with other Council departments, instructing clients, Courts and Tribunals, Representatives of other parties, Barristers and Experts, the Police and other Enforcement Agencies, service providers such as bailiffs, government Departments, other local authorities, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, regulatory bodies, auditors, the Land Registry and our insurers.

Our retention schedule sets out how long we keep personal information for.

We do not process your personal data by automated means.

You can find out more about your rights regarding the personal information used for this service. Your rights apply to the information held by us as a data controller, and the information we hold on behalf of the other data controllers.

If you have any questions or concerns about how we use your personal information, please contact the Council’s Data Protection Officer.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office if you're unhappy about how we process your information.