All services
  1. Home
  2. Your council
  3. Data protection and privacy
  4. Service privacy notices

Registration service privacy notice

1 Council contact details

1.1 North Northamptonshire Council

Registered Office:

Sheerness House
41 Meadow Road
Kettering
Northamptonshire
NN16 8TL

Tel: 0300 126 3000

1.2 You can contact the Registration Service via email: [email protected]

1.3 The Registration Service is delivered by Local Authorities on behalf of the General Register Office (GRO).

1.4 For further information regarding this service please visit our webpages

2 Information that we hold

2.1 Our officers currently collect and process the following information while fulfilling their statutory duties:

  • name
  • date of birth
  • contact details, including address telephone number and email
  • payment details (when charges are applicable)

3  How the information is obtained

3.1 Most of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by you, when you register a birth, death, marriage, civil partnership or citizenship ceremonies via:

  • online bookings
  • telephone calls
  • emails
  • letters or forms
  • face-to-face

3.2 There are a number of reasons why we need to collect and use your personal information. Generally, we collect and use personal information where:

  • it is necessary to meet our legal obligation
  • the processing is necessary for us to perform a task in the public interest
  • you have requested a service from us
    or
  • you have entered into a contract with us.

The primary legislation we act under includes:

  • Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953
  • Registration of Births and Deaths Regulations 1987
  • Population Statistics Act 1938
  • Marriage Act 1949
  • Regulation 4 Registration of Marriage Regulations 2015
  • Civil Partnership Act 2004
  • Regulation 3 Civil Partnership (Registration Provisions) Regulations 2005

We also provide non–statutory services (e.g. naming ceremonies).

4 What we do with the information

4.1 While discharging their statutory duties, registrars and superintendent registrars are required to collect personal information, in accordance with current legislation and guidelines, for the purpose of:

  • Birth, still-birth and death registrations
  • Marriages and Civil Partnerships notice and registration
  • Citizenship Ceremonies
  • Booking appointments
  • Applications for certificates.
  • Seeking customer feedback
  • Providing related information about the services
  • To complete an Annual Performance Review for the GRO. This includes providing evidence of customer feedback/engagement. This data is used to review our existing customer provision and/or implement changes to further enhance the customer experience.

4.2 There is further information on the council’s website.

4.3 All key life events are logged onto a system provided by the GRO for England and Wales, with the purpose of maintaining a central record of all registrations. Where legislation requires, a hard-copy is also created.

4.5 Both the council, and the GRO, may also make information available to Central Government, Local Government, NHS, UK Statistics Authority and law enforcement organisations where appropriate, for one or more of the following purposes:

  • Providing the Tell Us Once service, if you have opted to use this when registering a death.
  • Statistical or research purposes.
  • Administrative purposes by official bodies e.g. ensuring their records are up-to-date.
  • Fraud prevention or detection, immigration and passport purposes.

4.6 We are also required by law to share details of death registrations with relevant bodies to ensure their records are accurate or for monitoring purposes. This ranges from public pension payers to profession-specific organisations such as the General Medical Council, General Dental Council and General Optical Council.

4.7 We require anyone we share information with, or who uses it on our behalf, to comply with the same legislation. All staff receive training on data protection and information security.

4.8 A copy of a register entry will be provided to any applicant, provided that they supply enough information to identify the entry concerned and pay the appropriate statutory fee. The copy from a local Registration Service may only be issued in the form of a paper certified copy (a “certificate”). An application for a certificate may be made to either ourselves or to the GRO.

4.9 The GRO makes indexes, for the central record of registrations, publicly available in order to help members of the public identify the registration they might need.

5 How long we keep your information for and how we securely dispose of it after use

5.1 We only keep information for as long as it is needed. This will be based on either a legal requirement (where a law says we must keep information for a specific period of time) or accepted business practice.

5.2 We keep your personal information in line with the council’s retention schedules.

5.3 We will securely dispose of your information in line with those retention periods.     

6 How we store your information

6.1 Your information is securely stored on the council’s systems, in which the servers are UK based.

6.2 All register entries are stored in accordance with UK data protection legislation and current legislation as dictated by the GRO.

7  Your data protection rights

7.1 The law gives you a number of rights to control what personal information is used by us and how we can use it. Please see section 15 of the council’s Corporate Privacy Notice for further information.

7.2 Please be aware that your rights may differ depending on the lawful basis for processing your personal data.

7.3 The right to withdraw consent - You can ask that we no longer use your details for this processing. If you wish to exercise this right, please contact the Data Protection Officer detailed in section 8.1 below.

7.4 It should be noted that records regarding the deceased are not covered by UK Data Protection legislation, which relates only to living individuals. However, the common law duty of confidentiality is still applicable.

8 Who to contact

8.1 If you would like further information about how we use your personal information, or you wish to exercise one of your data rights or you wish to complain about the use of your personal information please contact the Data Protection Officer.

8.2 If you are still dissatisfied once you have contacted the Data Protection Officer, you have the right to complain to the ICO.

The ICO’s address:           

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113        

9 Changes to this privacy notice

9.1 Privacy notices are live documents, which will be updated or revised in line with legislation.

Last updated 17 April 2023