Privacy policy

This page explains what kind of personal information the Home Office holds about you, how it's protected and how you can find out about it.

What personal information we hold about you

If you create an account on our service, we will hold the following information about you:

• your personal details: your name, email address and job title
• whether you've signed up to be contacted for feedback purposes or to receive information on resources and guidance relating to modern slavery

In addition, if you register a public sector organisation on your account, or manually register any organisation (as opposed to selecting an organisation from our database), we will ask for and retain your telephone number.

What personal information we hold about others in your organisation

When you submit your organisation’s modern slavery statement to our service, we will hold the name and job title of the director (or equivalent) who signed off that statement.

If your organisation’s statement cannot be accessed via a link on your website, we will also ask for and retain a contact email address for your organisation that members of the public can use to request a copy of your statement.

Purpose

This is a government-run registry allowing businesses and organistions that fall under section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to submit information about their modern slavery statements to GOV.UK so that the public can view it on the web, in one place.

We use your personal data so we can identify and authorise you to set up and operate a user account on our service.

We publish data about the individuals responsible for signing off modern slavery statements on GOV.UK in line with our legal basis of data processing.

Legal basis of data processing

We hold and process your information to perform a task in the public interest and in the exercise of official authority vested in the Home Office, in particular:

Allowing organisations to submit information about their modern slavery statements and publish this information on GOV.UK.

Our official authority derives from section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 which requires certain businesses to publish an annual modern slavery statement on their organisation’s website - this should outline what they’re doing to prevent modern slavery in their organisation and supply chains.

How long we keep your personal data

We will retain your data as long as we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so, according to the following rules:

If you create an account but do not carry out any activities on behalf of an organisation, we will delete your details securely from the SQL database and related backups after 18 months of inactivity. We will notify you in advance, giving you 30 days to sign back in to the service should you wish to keep your account.

If you have registered and carried out activity on behalf of an organisation, we will retain your personal data in our database for a period of 5 years beyond your last activity. This is done as a duty of care to the organisations registered should they need to know who carried out an action.

Sharing your information

The name and job title of the director (or equivalent) who signed off the modern slavery statement submitted for your organisation will be published on GOV.UK.

If you register as a user on behalf of your organisation, your name will be shared with other users who are registered to submit modern slavery statements for your organisation. Your name will not be shared with any other users.

Your information will be shared with our mail and email service providers where this is needed to process your registration and with our hosting suppliers and third-party IT support companies for the purposes of managing the site. It will also be shared with the Home Office, who currently provide some IT services for us.

There are some cases when your information can be shared for other reasons, for example to prevent crime, respond to legal obligations or cooperate with public inquiries.

No personal data will be processed outside the United Kingdom.

Where personal data has not been obtained from you

Personal data may be obtained from another person in your organisation if:

• you are the director (or equivalent) who signed off your organisation’s modern slavery statement
• you are the person whose contact email addess has been provided so that a member of the public can request a full copy of your organisation's statement should a website link not be accessible

Your rights

The data protection legislation gives you the right to ask:

• whether we hold any of your personal data (and if so to receive a copy)
• what we are using your personal data for
• to whom we have disclosed or intend to disclose any of your personal data
• for how long we intend to hold your personal data
• for inaccurate personal data to be rectified
• for the processing of your personal data to be restricted
• for your personal data to be erased (the 'right to be forgotten')

These rights are not absolute and may be subject to exemptions or restrictions. You can see and rectify the personal information we hold about you via the manage account page when you log in to your account on the service.

You may also close your account within the service, but we will retain details about your account in line with our data retention policies, subject to any request for erasure.

Contact details

The data controller for your personal data is the Home Office. The contact details for the data controller are:

Phone 0207 7035 4848, or email: public.enquiries@homeoffice.gov.uk

The contact details for the data controller’s Data Protection Officer are:

Phone 020 7035 6999, or email: dpo@homeoffice.gov.uk

The Data Protection Officer provides independent advice and monitoring of the Home Office’s use of personal information.

How to make a complaint

If you're unhappy with the way we have handled your personal information, you can contact us at modernslaverystatements@homeoffice.gov.uk or:

If you consider that your personal data has been misused or mishandled, you can make a complaint to the Information Commissioner, who is an independent regulator. Contact information for the Information Commissioner can be found at https://ico.org.uk/.