Privacy notice - Register Office

Personal information will be collected from you if you are make an application to this office, for example to register a Birth, Death, Marriage or Civil Partnership or to apply for a certificate or to correct information contained in a register entry.

The information you provide will be held and processed by registration officers for this registration district. 

The superintendent registrar is a data controller for birth, marriage and death registrations and can be contacted at the Register Office in Middlesbrough.

The local authority is a data controller for civil partnership registrations and can be contacted via the Superintendent Registrar at Middlesbrough.

The Registrar General for England and Wales is a joint data controller for birth, marriage, death and civil partnership registrations and can be contacted at the

General Register Office
Trafalgar Road
Southport
PR8 2HH

What type of personal data do we collect?

Your name, address, email address, telephone number and other contact information that allow us to meet our organisational and statutory obligations.

How we collect your personal data

We collect your information as it is made public to us in the process of registration.

Personal information collected from you in order to register an event is required by law.  

The legislation which governs the collection of registration information is the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, the Marriage Act 1949 and the Civil Partnership Act 2004.

You may be legally obliged under these acts, and other pieces of legislation, to provide certain pieces of information.  If you fail to provide information you are required to give us you may, amongst other things, be liable to a fine, or we may not be able to provide the service you are applying for, such as a marriage or a civil partnership.

A copy of any register entry will be provided by this office in accordance with the law to any applicant, provided they supply enough information to identify the entry concerned and pay the appropriate fee. The copy may only be issued in the form of a paper certified copy (a “certificate”). An application for a certificate may also be made to the General Register Office.

Indexes for events registered at this office are publicly available in order to help members of the public identify the registration record they might need. Indexes are available online and in manual indexes. Where the information contained within local indexes is available online it is done in a manner which is compliant with data protection and Human Rights legislation.

A copy of the information collected by a registration officer will also be sent to the Registrar General for England and Wales so that a central record of all registrations can be maintained.

Registration information held at this office may be shared with other organisations in the course of carrying out our functions, or to enable others to perform theirs. 

We will only share information where there is a lawful basis to do so for the following reasons:

1. Statistical or research purposes
2. Administrative purposes by official bodies e.g. ensuring their records are up-to-date in order to provide services to the public
3. Fraud prevention or detection, immigration and passport purposes

Further information on data held by the registration service and a full list of the organisations with whom registration data is shared, the purpose and the lawful basis for sharing the data can be obtained from staff at this office.

Access to your information is strictly governed and where not made publicly available via our open registers we will ensure it is kept safe and secure. Only staff who should need access to your data will be enabled and your information is held securely within our operating systems which are reviewed and monitored on a regular basis.

Registration information is retained indefinitely as required by law.

Data may be transferred in order to comply with fraud prevention or detection, immigration and passport purposes.

The Registrars service will not market to you.

Your Information Rights are set out in law and, subject to some exceptions, you have the:

• Right to rectification - to ask for information to be corrected
• Right to erasure - to have your personal data deleted
• Right to object - to how your data is used
• Right to restriction - to request limits on how your data is used
• Right to portability - to request that we move your data to another organisation
• Right of subject access - to request a copy of data the Council holds about you

If you have any concerns about the way we are collecting or using your personal data, you should raise your concern with us in the first instance or directly to the Information Commissioner's Office. Visit the website of the Information Commissioner's Office.

If you would like to discuss anything in this privacy notice or your information rights, please contact:

The Data Protection Officer
Middlesbrough Council
PO Box 500, Middlesbrough, TS1 9FT
Phone: 01642 245432
Email: dataprotection@middlesbrough.gov.uk