Body-worn video privacy notice

This privacy notice relates to body-worn video.

The Chief Constable of North Yorkshire Police is committed to protecting your personal information.

This Privacy Notice contains important information about what personal details we collect; what we do with that information; who we may share it with and why; and your choices and rights when it comes to the personal information you have given to us.

We may need to make changes to our Privacy Notice, so please check our website for updates from time to time. If there are important changes such as changes to where your personal data will be processed, we may need to contact you to let you know.

Who we are?

This Privacy Notice is provided to you by the Chief Constable of North Yorkshire Police who is the data controller of this data.

Your personal data – what is it?

“Personal data” is any information about a living individual which allows them to be identified.  Identification can be directly using the data itself, or by combining it with other information which helps to identify a living individual. The processing of personal data is governed by legislation relating to personal data which applies in the United Kingdom including the General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”) and the Data Protection Act 2018, and other legislation relating to personal data and rights, such as the Human Rights Act.

The data we may collect about you:

Police body worn video is an overt method implemented to promote public reassurance, capture best evidence, modify behaviour, prevent harm and deter people from committing crime and/or engaging in anti-social behaviour. By effectively embedding the use of Body Worn Video in our uniformed patrols, North Yorkshire Police will maximise these benefits. The recordings will provide unquestionable video and audio evidence of interactions between uniformed police officers/staff and members of the public, to ensure that people are treated with dignity, respect, and in a professional manner. All recordings will be incident specific; cameras will not be used indiscriminately to record all patrols or duties.

Personal Data that we may collect includes photographic, video and digital imagery and audio commentary.

North Yorkshire Police will use the minimum amount of personal information necessary to carry out a particular activity.

There will be certain sensitive incidents when it is not appropriate to use Body Worn Video. Officers will take reasonable steps to make you aware of the active recording.

Whose personal data do we handle? 

• Police Officers’;
• Members of the public.

Officers are advised to restrict recording to areas and persons necessary to obtain evidence and intelligence relevant to the incident, and should attempt to minimise collateral intrusion to those not involved.

What is the legal basis for processing your personal data?

The Chief Constable of North Yorkshire Police may process personal data as part of their official duties, for the purpose of prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences or the execution of criminal penalties, including the safeguarding against and the prevention of threats to public security. We also retain footage for training and auditing purposes.

The Data Controller will comply with data protection law. This says that the personal data we hold about you must be:

• Used lawfully and fairly;
• Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes;
• Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes;
• Accurate and kept up to date;
• Kept only as long as is necessary for the purposes we have told you about;
• Kept and destroyed securely, including ensuring that appropriate technical and security measures are in place to protect your personal data and to protect personal data from loss, misuse, unauthorised access and disclosure.

Sharing your personal data:

We may share your personal data internally with relevant departments for the purpose of fulfilling the above stated legal basis. For the same purpose, we may also engage the services of other agencies. We may also share the footage with community scrutiny panels as part of the scrutiny of our use of stop and search and use of force powers. The footage will be shared under the legal basis of performing a task carried out in the public interest.

Where we have arrangements to share your personal data, there is a contract, memorandum of understanding or information sharing agreement in place to ensure that the requirements of the Data Protection legislation on handling personal information are met. Where we are required to disclose information by law, for example for safeguarding purposes, we may do so without these arrangements.

We engage with third party processors who handle some, or all, of the above mentioned information on our instruction.

NYP will take steps to ensure any disclosures of personal data are necessary and proportionate, as required by law. Whenever we share your personal information, sharing options will be evaluated to ensure that your data is shared in the most secure manner.

How do we keep your personal information secure?

We are committed to ensuring that your personal data is safe and processed securely. In order to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised manner, altered or disclosed, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial measures. These include information security awareness training for our staff. We have also compiled procedures to safeguard and secure the information that we hold about you which our staff adhere to.

We limit the access to your personal information to those employees who have a business need to know, for instance through secure work areas and access controls on all of our systems. Employees, contractors and other third parties who handle personal data will only process your personal information in line with our direct instructions.

How long do we keep your personal information?

North Yorkshire Police keeps your personal information as long as is necessary for the particular purpose, or purposes, for which it is held and records will be managed in accordance with the Force’s Retention Schedule.

Retention guidelines for personal information which is placed on the Police National Computer can be found within the National Police Chief’s Council’s Deletion of Records from National Police Systems document.

Other records that contain your personal information and which was processed for law enforcement purposes are retained in accordance with the College of Policing guidance on the Management of Police Information and North Yorkshire Police Record Retention Policy.

Your rights and personal data:

A key area of change in the new Data Protection Act relates to individuals’ rights. The law refreshes existing rights by clarifying and extending them and introduces new rights.

However your information rights will be dependent on the reason why the data was collected, how the data was collected and why it is being used.

Further information about your rights can be found on our Data Protection page.

Further processing:

If we wish to use your personal data for a new purpose, not covered by this Privacy Notice, we may provide you with a new notice explaining this new use and setting out the relevant purposes and processing conditions, prior to commencing the processing.  We will seek your prior consent to the new processing if this is appropriate.

Contact details:

Details as to how we can be contacted, as well as how you can submit a complaint is available on our website. Please see our privacy notice.

This version of our Privacy Notice was last updated on 26 May 2022.