Essex County Council is committed to protecting your privacy when you use council services, including this website.
The Privacy Notice below explains how this website uses information about you and the ways in which we protect your privacy.
How can you access the information we hold about you?
You can change the information we hold about you using the Update my details page.
How do we keep information secure?
We will take appropriate steps to make sure we hold your account information about in a secure way, and we will only make them available to those who have a right to see them. Our security includes:
- Encryption
- Access controls on systems
- Security training for all staff
View our policy on Information security.
Who will we share your personal information with?
We do not sell personal information to any other organisation for the purposes of direct marketing.
Cookies
To make this site simpler, we sometimes place small data files on your computer. These are known as cookies. Most big websites do this too.
They improve things by:
- remembering settings, so you don’t have to keep re-entering them whenever you visit a new page
- remembering information you’ve given (eg your postcode) so you don’t need to keep entering it
- measuring how you use the website so we can make sure it meets your needs.
By using our website, you agree that we can place these types of cookies on your device. We do not use cookies on our main website that collect information about your browsing habits in order to make advertising relevant to you and your interests.
Our cookies aren’t used to identify you personally. They’re just here to make the site work better for you. Indeed, you can manage and/or delete these small files as you wish.
To learn more about cookies and how to manage them, visit AboutCookies.org or watch a video about cookies.
Measuring website usage (Google Analytics)
We use Google Analytics to collect information about how people use this site. We do this to make sure it’s meeting its users’ needs and to understand how we could do it better.
Google Analytics stores information about what pages you visit, how long you are on the site, how you got here and what you click on. We do not collect or store your personal information (e.g. your name or address) so this information cannot be used to identify who you are.
| Name | Typical Content | Expires |
|---|
| _utma | randomly generated number | 2 years |
| _utmb | randomly generated number | 30 minutes |
| _utmc | randomly generated number | when you close your browser |
| _utmx | randomly generated number | 2 years |
| _utmxx | randomly generated number | 2 years |
| _utmz | randomly generated number and information on how the site was reached (e.g. direct or via a link, organic search or paid search) | |
We also collect information on the number of times particular search terms are used and the number of failed searches. We use this information to improve access to the site and to identify gaps in the information content so we can plan appropriate expansion of the system.
Unless the law allows us to, we do not:
- share any of the information we collect about you with others
- use this information to identify individuals.
Third party cookies
We use videos from YouTube and feeds from other websites such as Facebook and Twitter. These third party websites place cookies on your device when watching or viewing these pages.
Below are links to their cookie policies:
Disabling cookies
You can stop cookies being downloaded on to your computer or other device by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. If you do this, however, you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website.
There is more information about how to delete or stop using cookies on AboutCookies.org. If you wish, you can also opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics.
Further information on the use of personal information can be found at
ico.org.uk