Privacy statement
Your privacy is important to Kāpiti Coast District Council (“the Council”). This privacy statement covers our collection, use, and disclosure of your personal information. It has been prepared in accordance with our obligations and your rights, as set out in the Privacy Act 2020.
From time to time we may amend this statement in response to developments in our services, legislative changes or privacy best practice.
The personal information we collect may include your name, date of birth, address, email address, telephone numbers, and gender. It may also include information on your use of our services or facilities and any other information provided by you through your communications with us.
We may collect personal information about you when you or someone acting on your behalf provides information to us directly. For example:
- when you apply for employment with us
- correspond with us in person, by letter, phone, text, email, instant messages, or other means of electronic communication
- complete and submit forms or applications for consents, licences, housing, approvals, permits, funding, or other authorisations
- use any of our services or facilities, and where personal information is necessary for the provision of those products or services. We may also collect information when you sign up for and use our online services and applications, such as online payment services, or newsletters, or service updates
- prepare and submit a written submission, request, or other feedback in relation to consents, licences, approvals, permits, funding, other authorisations, or in relation to any form of draft or proposed plan, policy, bylaw, or other document
- follow or post comments in response to our social media or other facilities, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
We may keep a record of any information you acquire from us. We may monitor and record phone calls made to us or by us for quality control or staff training purposes. If a call is to be monitored and recorded, you will be informed at the time of the call.
We may collect personal information about you from other organisations, entities or persons, where you have expressly authorised them to provide us with information or where permitted or required by law. These organisations, entities or persons may include:
- our related organisations (if any)
- our suppliers, which include organisations such as:
- Land Information New Zealand, including property ownership searches through sources such as Landonline and Quickmap
- Quotable Value New Zealand
- Solicitors/Conveyancers
- Credit reporting agencies and other organisations, entities and persons
- the New Zealand Police
Personal information may also be provided from third parties to the Council, and may be held, used, and disclosed by the Council:
- to enable the Council to communicate with you for any purpose
- to enable the Council to provide you, or facilitate the provision to you of advice and information concerning products and services that the Council believes may be of interest to you
- to enable the Council to administer and maintain its records and carry out its required functions.
You have the right under the Privacy Act 2020 to obtain access to and to request correction of any personal information held by the Council concerning you.
In some instances, your personal information may be transferred, and held, by service providers in New Zealand and overseas (for example, where it is stored using a cloud-based service) in accordance with New Zealand legislation and data standards.
Responses to online forms
When you respond to an online form on our site, we retain information you have entered into these forms. This information is used to respond to issues you raise, correct information we hold, provide a service to you, or to inform decision making and is shared with Council officers and any third parties contracted to provide a service to you.
Online submission forms for consultations
All submissions (including name, but not contact details) may be provided in their entirety to elected members and made available to the public at our office and on our website. Personal information (including contact details) will also be used for the administration of our consultation processes including informing you of the outcome of the consultation. All information collected will be held by Council, with submitters having the right to access and correct or withhold personal information.
Council may require the emergency contact details of a parent or guardian (first and last name and contact phone number to be given to reception) for certain visits by young people to Council facilities such as aquatics or libraries. These contact details will be held in confidence at Reception and securely disposed of at the end of each day.
Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) is used to capture footage in particular areas and Council facilities, to monitor property, secure facilities such as libraries and recreation centres, and monitor public places to help reduce crime, and to promote community safety.
Signage indicates where CCTV equipment is operating. CCTV footage will only be viewed by authorised people in accordance with the purpose noted above, or when checking that the system is operational. No attempt will be made to identify individuals from CCTV footage except in cases of reported or suspected incidents requiring investigation.
Council accepts that members of the public or media may wish to take photographs or videos of an employee or employees in a public place or make an audio recording of a conversation (as long as the recording was made by a party to that conversation) and neither constitutes a breach of the Privacy Act 2020 unless the collection of that record is considered ‘highly offensive’ to a reasonable person.
If an individual, member of the public, or media wishes to make a video or audio recording of a conversation with a Council staff member, Council requests that permission is sought from the relevant staff member and that the staff member is advised of the recording ahead of this occurring. Council reserves the right for its staff to refuse to be recorded or to terminate an interaction (call or video link) if they become aware that they are being recorded and permission has not been sought in advance.
If an individual, member of the public, or media wishes to take photographs or videos on Council premises, permission must be sought in advance. For publicly notified meetings, the meeting Chair must be notified at the commencement of the meeting to ensure that the recording does not distract the meeting from fulfilling its business as per the Council Standing Orders.
In the interests of making Council’s decision-making process transparent and accessible, most public Council meetings are broadcast live online and then made available on our website. Most of the filming will cover elected members as they speak and debate at the meeting, however, the filming may also include shots of the public in the background and individuals speaking at a public forum.
The personal information we collect from you, or someone acting on your behalf, may be used for any of the following purposes:
- to provide you with services or facilities
- to confirm your identity – this is to avoid inappropriate release or use of your information
- to respond to correspondence or provide you with information you have requested
- to process any consent, licence, approval, permit, or other authorisation for which you have applied
- to process your application to use or register for any of our services or facilities, including our online services and to process payments received or made by the Council
- to respond to your requests, enquiries, feedback, or for customer care related activities
- to provide you with information about our Council events, news, services, or facilities we consider may be of interest to you
- to comply with relevant laws and regulations
- to carry out activities connected with the running of our business or operations such as personnel training or testing and maintenance of computer and other systems
- for any specific purpose that we notify you of at the time your personal information is collected
- for general administrative and business purposes to assist us in analysing, and further developing and improving our products and services.
We take reasonable steps to make sure personal information we collect is:
- protected against loss, damage, misuse, and unauthorised access – we give restricted access to other parties who may require your personal information to help us perform our duties and obligations
- accurate, up to date, complete, relevant, and not misleading.
- compliant with the requirements prescribed by the New Zealand government for the secure handling, storage and disposal of any protectively marked or security classified information.
We ensure that our third-party providers can meet our privacy and security requirements. We are satisfied, for example, that Microsoft has adequate security and privacy safeguards in place to protect information it holds on our behalf.
We use third party providers to store and process our data.
We store most of the personal information we collect and generate electronically on either hosted servers (IaaS) located in New Zealand or Microsoft Azure cloud servers located in Australia. We also use Microsoft Office 365 for our email and other office productivity applications. This means that the personal information we hold may be transferred to, or accessed from, countries other than New Zealand.
Information about our e-learning modules is stored on the Moodle platform at the Vocus data centre in New Zealand.
We retain personal information in compliance with the requirements of the Public Records Act 2005.
If you do not provide us with personal information requested from you, Council staff may not be able to adequately respond to your correspondence, process applications you have submitted, provide the services or facilities you have requested, process payments, or otherwise deal with any requests or enquiries made by you.
We may retain all personal information we collect (on both our active systems and our archive systems) for as long as administratively necessary, in accordance with the Council’s information retention and disposal policies and relevant legislation.
Under the Public Records Act 2005 Council is not permitted to dispose of ‘protected records’ without the authorisation of the Chief Archivist. In some circumstances, your personal information may be included within a protected record, including submissions you make in relation to bylaws, annual plans, and district or regional planning instruments.
You may request confirmation about whether or not we hold any personal information about you, and you may request access to your personal information that we hold by emailing us at [email protected] or via the Privacy Commissioner’s 'About Me' tool. Once we have verified your identity, we will provide you with confirmation and access, unless one of the grounds for refusal set out in the Privacy Act 2020 applies.
Also, you may request that the personal information we hold about you be corrected by emailing us at [email protected]. If we agree that your personal information is to be corrected, we will do so and we will also provide you with an amended record, if requested. If we do not agree, we will note your request for correction on your customer record.
Your rights of access to and correction of any personal information we hold about you are subject to the requirements set out in the Privacy Act 2020.
If you have any queries or concerns about this Privacy Statement or personal data Council has collected, we are happy to respond or investigate.
Please contact us using one of the methods below:
- Email: [email protected]
- Postal address: Private Bag 60601, Paraparaumu 5254, New Zealand.
For more detailed information about our obligations and your rights under the Privacy Act 2020, you can refer to the Privacy Commissioner's website or call the Privacy Commissioner’s enquiry line: 0800 803 909.
Information collected
We may collect information about your visit to help us improve this website. This information is aggregated and doesn't identify you personally. It includes:
Use of statistical information
The information referred to above will be viewable by website administrators and certain other Council staff. It may also be shared with other councils.
Tools and cookies on our website
We use technologies, such as cookies, to customise content and advertising, to provide social media features and to analyse traffic to the site. We also share information about your use of our site with our trusted social media, advertising, and analytics partners.
Google Tag Manager
We use Google Tag Manager to manage tags on this website. Google Tag Manager is a service provided by Google and itself includes a cookie. You may view Google’s Privacy Policy.
Google Analytics
Our website kapiticoast.govt.nz uses Google Analytics to measure which pages on our site attract the most interest and to inform our overall communications and engagement strategy to ensure we are engaging with a variety of different users. Google may use the data collected to contextualise and personalise the ads of its own advertising network.
If you would like to opt-out of any of Google Analytics function visit these currently available opt-outs for the web.
Remarketing
Google Ads Remarketing is a remarketing and behavioural targeting service provided by Google that connects the activity of kapiticoast.govt.nz with the Google Ads advertising network and the DoubleClick Cookie. Users can opt out of Google's use of cookies for ads personalisation by visiting Google's Ads Settings.
Facebook Ads conversion tracking (Facebook pixel)
Facebook Ads conversion tracking (Facebook pixel) is an analytics service provided by Facebook that connects data from the Facebook advertising network with actions performed on kapiticoast.govt.nz. The Facebook pixel tracks conversions that can be attributed to ads on Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network.
You can find out how to control what Facebook collects on Facebook’s data policy and privacy page, and you can opt out.