P4 PROVIDERS is provided by the Government Digital Service (GDS), part of the Cabinet Office.


If you have a P4 PROVIDERS account, read the full P4 PROVIDERS accounts privacy notice to find out how your account stores, processes and shares your personal information.

If you follow a link to a service provided by another government department, agency or local authority, that organisation will:

be the data controller
be responsible for processing any data you share with them
publish and manage their own privacy notice with details of how to contact them
Example

If you make a claim for Universal Credit www.universal-credit.service.gov.uk, the Department for Work and Pensions will be the responsible controller. The service’s own privacy notice will apply.

A data controller determines how and why personal data is processed. For more information, read the Cabinet Office’s entry in the Data Protection Public Register.

What data we collect
The personal data we collect from you includes:

questions, queries or feedback you leave, including your email address if you contact P4 PROVIDERS
your postcode and address if you use a P4 PROVIDERS service that includes a postcode or address lookup function (such as the school term and holiday dates service)
your email address and subscription preferences when you sign up to our email alerts
how you use our emails - for example whether you open them and which links you click on
your Internet Protocol (IP) address, and details of which version of web browser you used
information on how you use the site, using cookies and page tagging techniques
Where you provide your consent, we use Google Analytics and LUX Real User Monitoring (RUM) cookies to collect information about how you use our website. This includes IP addresses.

Google Analytics processes information about:

We make sure you cannot be directly identified by Google Analytics data. We do this by using Google Analytics’ IP address anonymisation feature and by removing any other personal data from the titles or URLs of the pages you visit.

We will not combine analytics information with other data sets in a way that would directly identify who you are.

LUX Real User Monitoring software processes anonymised information about:

how well the pages performed on your device
performance bottlenecks your device experienced
JavaScript errors your device encountered

Why we need your data
We collect your personal data in order to:

gather feedback to improve our services, for example our email alerts
respond to any feedback you send us, if you’ve asked us to
send email alerts to users who request them
allow you to access government services and make transactions
provide you with information about local services
monitor use of the site to identify security threats
monitor the performance of the site to identify inefficiencies and JavaScript errors
We use the information we collect through Google Analytics and LUX to see how you use the government and to see how well the site performs on your device.

We do this to help make sure the government is meeting the needs of its users
make improvements, for example improving site search
make performance improvements, for example improving page load time and data usage
We combine Google Analytics information with similar data from other government digital services to help understand and improve user journeys within our government digital services.

Our legal basis for processing your data
The legal basis for processing personal data in relation to site security is our legitimate interests, and the legitimate interests of our users, in ensuring the security and integrity of our governing board.


The legal basis for processing all other personal data is that it’s necessary:

to perform a task in the public interest
in the exercise of our functions as a government department
What we do with your data
The data we collect may be shared with other government departments, agencies and public bodies. It may also be shared with our technology suppliers, for example our hosting provider.

We will share your data if we are required to do so by law - for example, by court order, or to prevent fraud or other crime.

The data we collect with Google Analytics cookies is transferred and stored with Google where we analyse it with Google Analytics software (Universal Analytics). We do not allow Google to use or share this data for their own purposes.

We will not:

sell or rent your data to third parties
share your data with third parties for marketing purposes
How long we keep your data
We will only retain your personal data for as long as it is needed for the purposes set out in this document or for as long as the law requires us to.

We will:

keep your email data until you unsubscribe
keep your feedback data for 2 years
delete access log data which contain your IP address after 120 days
Children’s privacy protection
Our services are not designed for, or intentionally targeted at, children 13 years of age or younger. We do not intentionally collect or maintain data about anyone under the age of 13.

Where your data is processed and stored
We design, build and run our systems to make sure that your data is as safe as possible at all stages, both while it’s processed and when it’s stored

How we protect your data and keep it secure
We are committed to doing all that we can to keep your data secure. We have set up systems and processes to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure of your data - for example, we protect your data using varying levels of encryption.

We also make sure that any third parties that we deal with keep all personal data they process on our behalf secure.

Your rights
You have the right to request:

information about how your personal data is processed
a copy of that personal data
that anything inaccurate in your personal data is corrected immediately
You can also:

raise an objection about how your personal data is processed
request that your personal data is erased if there is no longer a justification for it
ask that the processing of your personal data is restricted in certain circumstances
If you have any of these requests, get in contact with our Privacy Team.

This privacy notice only applies to us and does not cover other government services and transactions that we link to. These services, such as Universal Credit, have their own terms and conditions and privacy policies.

Following a link to another website
If you go to another website from this one, read the privacy policy on that website to find out what it does with your information.

We may receive personal information from the other website. You should read the privacy policy of the website you came from to find out more about this.

Contact us or make a complaint
Contact the Privacy Team if you have a question about anything in this privacy notice
If you think that your personal data has been misused or mishandled



The DPO provides independent advice and monitoring of our use of personal information.

You can also make a complaint to the Information Commissioner, who is an independent regulator.

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire SK9 5AF
Changes to this policy
We may change this privacy policy. In that case, the ‘last updated date at the bottom of this page will also change. Any changes to this privacy policy will apply to you and your data immediately.

If these changes affect how your personal data is processed, GDS will take reasonable steps to let you know.