Free School Meals privacy notice
What we do
Free School Meals are a statutory benefit available to school-aged children from families who receive certain qualifying benefits. Younger children may also be eligible for Free School Meals if they attend a local authority nursery school or nursery class and attend full days. Coventry City Council Benefits Service administers the award of Free School Meals for eligible children in Coventry on behalf of the Government.
What personal data do we collect and how do we use it?
We need to collect your personal data in order to assess entitlement to Free School Meals. This data may include:
- your contact details (name, address, telephone number and email address)
- details about you (date of birth, national insurance number)
- details about your child (name, date of birth, school)
Applicants for Free School Meals, including those who have requested it through a Housing Benefit and/or Council Tax Support claim, will have provided this information to us directly. We also carry out a data matching exercise each year to identify children who might be entitled to Free School Meals.
We use your personal data to:
- check whether your child is eligible for Free School Meals
- notify your child’s school of their entitlement to Free School Meals
- provide food vouchers to support families during the school holidays
- deal with any complaints or concerns
- detect fraud and protect public funds
How the law allows us to use your personal data
The Council has a legal obligation to deliver our ‘public tasks’, one of which is to provide Free School Meals to eligible children in Coventry. The laws that allow us to handle these applications and to enrol pupils in Free School Meals are the Education Act 1996 and Localism Act 2011.
We need to have a lawful basis to process personal data under data protection law. Our lawful bases are:
- processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation (Article 6(c) of UK GDPR)
- processing is necessary for performance of a task carried out in the public interest (Article 6(1)(e) of UK GDPR)
Who we share your information with
We will share information with:
- your child’s school or early years provider to let them know that your child has been awarded Free School Meals
- the Department for Education’s Free School Meals checking service
How do we keep your personal data secure?
We use the following measures to ensure that your personal data is secure:
- data protection and security policies,
- information security incident reporting, data and device encryption,
- system and data access controls,
- user accounts and passwords,
- physical and environmental security,
- staff vetting practices,
- staff training and awareness,
- data back-ups,
- ICT network penetration testing, and
- business continuity and disaster recovery plans.
How long will we keep your personal data?
We keep your data only for as long as required by law and in accordance with the Council's retention schedule.
Your rights
Your information rights are set out under data protection law and, subject to some exceptions, you have the:
- Right to rectification - to request that inaccurate information is corrected.
- Right to erasure - to request that your personal data is deleted.
- Right to object - to object to how your personal data is used.
- Right to restriction - to request limits on how your personal data is used.
- Right to portability - to request that we transfer your data to another organisation.
- Right of access - to request a copy of the personal information we hold about you through a Subject Access Request.
- Right to be informed - to have clear details of what data is collected, and why.
If you have any concerns or questions about how we look after your personal information, please contact our Data Protection Officer, at DPOTeam@coventry.gov.uk.