Privacy Notice

This privacy policy explains how the Office of the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner (OIASC) collects, uses and shares personal information.

Use the cookie settings in the corner of the website to find out how we collect data to improve our website and to change your settings.

The Office of the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner’s Office is referred to as OIASC throughout this policy.

Purpose of this policy

This policy explains:

the standards that you can expect when we request, hold or share your information about you (‘personal data’)
how you can get access to a copy of your personal data
what you can do if you think the standards are not being met

The OIASC collects your personal data to support the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner in carrying out their role, as laid out in Part 4 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015.

The Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner’s role is to encourage good practice in:
(a) the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of slavery and human trafficking offences;
(b) the identification of victims of those offences.

Find out more about the role of the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner here.

About personal information

Personal data is information about you as an individual. It can be your name, address, email address or telephone number. It can also include information relating to crimes committed against you.

We only process personal data that is relevant for the services we are providing to you. Section 44 of the Modern Slavery Act states that the Commissioner must not exercise any function in relation to an individual case, but that this does not prevent the Commissioner considering individual cases and drawing conclusions about them for the purpose of, or in the context of, considering a general issue.

This may include information relating to a crime committed against you, or someone you are corresponding with the OIASC on behalf of, or from an organisation that is involved in your case. Or we might just take some basic information so that we can add you to our newsletter email list.

We know how important it is to protect your privacy and to comply with data protection laws. We will safeguard your personal data and will only disclose it where it is lawful to do so, or with your consent.

When we ask you for personal data

We promise to inform you why we need your personal data. We ask only for the personal data we need and do not collect information that is irrelevant or excessive. This means:

• you can withdraw consent at any time, where relevant
• you can lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority
• we protect your data and make sure no unauthorised person has access to it
• we only share information with other organisations where appropriate and necessary
• we make sure we don’t keep your data longer than necessary
• we will never make your personal data available for commercial use without your consent
• we will always consider your request to correct, stop processing or erase your personal data

Contact us at iasc@iasc.independent.gov.uk if you have questions about:
• our instructions to staff on how to collect, use or delete your personal information
• how we check that the information we hold is accurate and up-to-date
• how to contact the OIASC’s Data Protection Officer

Freedom of information requests

You have the right to ask us what information we hold about you. This is sometimes known as a ‘freedom of information (FOI) request’ or a ‘subject access request’. Please contact us if you if you want to make one at iasc@iasc.independent.gov.uk

Complaints

If you consider that your information has been handled incorrectly, you can contact the Information Commissioner for independent advice about data protection.

Updates to this policy

We reserve the right to make changes to this Privacy Notice. Where possible, we will notify you of any changes by email.

Research

We conduct a range of research projects as part of our role to support the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner in reviewing the services that statutory and non-statutory services provide to victims of modern slavery. This includes research with victims and survivors, as well as professionals and practitioners who support them. The information we collect will depend on the nature of the study you are participating in. We will only collect the minimum amount of information needed for each research review we conduct.

Examples of personal data that we may collect are listed here. Please note that this information will only be collected when it is relevant to the research review you are taking part in:
• your name and contact details (email, address, phone number)
• information relating to a crime committed against you
• information about your family or personal circumstances
• information concerning your health and medical conditions
• other information relevant to the research study you are participating in

Using your data

We collate the information you provide, with the information provided by other participants in each research review project. We use this information to review the practices and services in line with the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner’s role.

Any published research review outputs will be at a summary level and your personal data will be anonymised. The exception to this is where we use in-depth case studies, whereby your personal data will be anonymised as far as possible. We will work with you in these circumstances to ensure that as far as possible you will not be identifiable from these outputs.

SmartSurvey

The OIASC uses a SmartSurvey account to collect survey responses for some of our research reviews. SmartSurvey collects and stores your response on our behalf in a highly secured environment. The OVC uses specific settings on our account so that your IP address is not recorded and linked to your survey response. Your response is therefore anonymised as far as possible.

SmartSurvey do not use your data other than to collect and store your survey response on our behalf. This may be processed and stored by SmartSurvey within the European Economic Area (EEA). Your response is owned and managed by the OIASC in line with the rest of this privacy notice. The OIASC will delete your response from SmartSurvey once the survey has closed and the data has been securely saved by the OIASC. If you have any queries about the handling of your data by SmartSurvey then please contact the OIASC

Who information may be shared with

We sometimes need to share the personal data we collect from you with trusted third parties. We will always notify you if we will be sharing your personal data. We will notify you when we gain consent from you to take part in the research study.

Please note that we only share your personal data with a third party when it is relevant and needed for a specific purpose. Examples of third parties we may work with include other agencies or arm’s-length bodies, or a government department such as the Home Office, when we require staff from these organisations to support us in our work; selected translation companies where responses are in languages other than English; transcription companies who we may work with to type up recorded interviews.

The OIASC does not transfer personal information overseas other than where SmartSurvey may process and store survey responses within the EEA.