Privacy Notice & Cookie Policy

PRIVACY NOTICE

PURPOSE OF THIS NOTICE  

Low Carbon Contracts Company (“the Company”) is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information. We are a data “controller”, meaning we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. Please read this privacy notice, which describes how we collect and use personal information about you in accordance with data protection law. It does not form part of any contract and we may update it at any time – note that we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates.

DATA PROTECTION PRINCIPLES  

We will comply with data protection law, which requires that the personal information we hold about you must be:

1. used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way;
2. collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes;
3. relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes;
4. accurate and kept up to date;
5. kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about; and
6. kept securely.

We have appropriate measures to ensure our compliance with our duties under data protection law.

THE KIND OF INFORMATION WE HOLD ABOUT YOU  
 
Personal data/information means any data/information about an individual from which that person can be identified; it does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data). We collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:

- personal contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, and personal email addresses; and,

- information about your use of the Allocation Round Resource Portal for Allocation Round website and related communications systems.

There are “special categories” of personal data that, due to their sensitivity, require a higher level of protection than the above kind of data. We will not collect, store and use any “special categories” of personal information.
 
HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION COLLECTED?  
 
We collect personal information about you through the website’s “Ask a Question” facility, when you enter your information into the requested fields and submit it.

HOW WE WILL USE INFORMATION ABOUT YOU  

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to, most commonly in the following circumstances:

1. where it is necessary for the public interest (and your interests and fundamental rights do not override such interest);
2. where we need to in order to comply with a legal obligation; and
3. as stated below.

In rare circumstances, we will use your personal information in the following situations:

1. where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests); and/or,
2. in those circumstances where we may rely on legitimate interests for our data processing, when using the data in a way that you would reasonably expect and that have minimal privacy impact. 

Situations in which we will use your personal information

We need all the categories of information listed above – see The kind of information we hold about you – primarily to allow us to exercise our public interest to provide you with Allocation Round information. In some cases, we may use your personal information to pursue the public interest, provided your interests and fundamental rights do not prevail.

If you fail to provide personal information

If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may not be able to provide you with all of the benefits of the AR4 website and any further related communication.

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so. Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law. 

DATA SHARING   

We will share your personal information with third parties where required by law (or the public interest) or where it is necessary to administer the stakeholder relationship with you. We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law. If we transfer your personal information outside the EU, you can expect a similar degree of protection in respect of your personal information.

Which third-party service providers process my personal information?

“Third parties” includes the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, National Grid ESO and third-party service providers like contractors or designated agents. The following activities are performed by third parties: IT services account administration, fraud and cyber breach prevention and investigation, and system backups.

How secure is my information with third-party service providers and BEIS?

All our third-party service providers are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal data in line with our policies. We only permit our third-party service providers to use your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions consistent with this Privacy Notice, and not for their own purposes.

When might you share my personal information with DESNZ and National Grid?

We share personal data with DESNZ and National Grid when you submit a question through the “Ask a Question” facility on this website.

What about other third parties? 

We may share your personal information with appropriate other third parties, for example with our auditor for the purposes of the annual audit. We may also need to share your personal information with a regulator or to comply with the law.

Transferring information outside the EU

To ensure that your personal information does receive an adequate level of protection we have put in place the following appropriate measures to ensure that your personal information is treated by those third parties in a way that is consistent with and which respects the EU and UK laws on data protection: contractual obligations and due diligence checks. If you require further information about these protective measures, you can request it from our Data Protection Officer (DPO) at DPO@lowcarboncontracts.uk.

DATA SECURITY  

We have put in place measures, details of which are available on request, to protect the security of your data. We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to keep it secure. We established procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) of any suspected breach where the law requires us to do so.

DATA RETENTION  

How long will you use my information for?

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements. In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you. Once you are no longer a user of the Allocation Round website and/or the purpose for which we have collected your data is no longer applicable or live, we will retain and securely destroy your personal information in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.

RIGHTS OF ACCESS, CORRECTION, ERASURE, AND RESTRICTION  

Your duty to inform us of changes

It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your stakeholder relationship with us.

Your rights in connection with personal information

Under certain circumstances, you have the legal right to:

1. request access to your personal information (known as a “subject access request” or SAR) which enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it;
2. request correction of the personal information that we hold about you, which enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected;
3. request erasure of your personal data, enabling you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it or where you have objected to the -processing;
4. object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a public interest and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object the processing on this ground or where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes;
5. request the restriction of processing of your personal data, which enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal data about you (e.g., to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it); and,
6. request the transfer of your personal information to another party.

If you want to review, verify, correct, request erasure of your personal data or object to the processing of your personal data, please contact the DPO at DPO@lowcarboncontracts.uk.

No fee usually required
 
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights); however, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.
 
What we may need from you
 
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.
 
RIGHT TO WITHDRAW CONSENT  
 
Where you have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact the DPO at DPO@lowcarboncontracts.uk.

Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.

DATA PROTECTION OFFICER  
 
We have appointed a DPO to oversee compliance with this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the DPO (at DPO@lowcarboncontracts.uk). You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the ICO, the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY NOTICE

We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.

If you have any queries about this privacy notice, please contact the DPO at DPO@lowcarboncontracts.uk.

Cookie policy

INFORMATION ABOUT OUR USE OF COOKIES  

This website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of the website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse this website and also allows us to improve the site. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer if you agree. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive.

We use the following cookies:

1. Strictly necessary cookies
These are cookies that are required for the operation of this website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of the website.

2. Analytical/performance cookies
They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us improve the way our website works, for example, it helps us ensure that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
We use Google Analytics software to collect information about how you use CfD Allocations.
Google Analytics stores information about:

• how you got to the site
• what you click on while you’re visiting the site
• how long you spend on the site
• how long you spend on each link page you click through to
• What you click on once at the page you’ve clicked through to
  We don’t collect or store your personal information (e.g. your name or address) so this information can’t be used to identify who you are. We don’t allow Google to use or share our analytics data

3. Functionality cookies

These cookies are used to recognise you when you return to this website. Cookies aren’t used to identify you personally. You’ll normally see a message on the site before we store a cookie on your computer. Find out more about how to manage cookies.

4. Targeting cookies
These cookies record your visit to the website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed.
You can find more information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them in the table below:
 

You block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of this site. Find out more about how to manage cookies.