Who are we?

Smart Start Childcare Nursery collects, uses and is responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are regulated under the General Data Protection Regulation which applies across the European Union (including in the United Kingdom) and we are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those laws.

The personal information we collect and use

Information collected by us

In the course of providing education and care we collect the following personal information when you provide it to us:

  • Personal information (such as name, date of birth, gender, home address and postcode)
  • Special category characteristics (such as special educational needs (SEN) information, ethnicity, relevant medical information) 
  • Parents/Carers Information (such as name, date of birth, National Insurance or National Asylum Support Service Number)
  • Financial eligibility information (such as 30 hours codes)
  • Attendance information (such as sessions attended, number of absences and absence reasons)

 We also obtain personal information from other sources as follows: 

  • Birmingham City Council
  • Special Educational Needs specialists 
  • Specialist Teachers 
  • Health Visitors 
  • Hospital appointments (Speech and Language / Paediatrician / Physiotherapy etc.) 
  • General Practitioner (GP surgery) 
  • Schools 
  • Police 
  • Social services 
  • Public Health England 
  • Emergency contacts 
  • Debt collecting agencies 

How we use your personal information 

We use your personal information to: 

  • Check and calculate free entitlement 
  • Provide appropriate pastoral care and support services to children 
  • Provide funding 
  • Provide advice, support and guidance to the setting 
  • Enable financial and policy compliance checks of the setting 
  • Assess and improve the quality of our services 
  • Comply with the law regarding data sharing 
  • Safeguard children 

How long your personal data will be kept

We will hold financial information securely and retain it for 7 years, after which the information is archived or securely destroyed. 

We will hold your personal information securely and retain it from the child /young person’s date of birth until they reach the age of 25, after which the information is archived or securely destroyed.

Reasons we can collect and use your personal information

We collect and use personal information to comply with our legal obligations under section 537A of the Education Act 1996, section 83 of the Children Act 1989, and to carry out tasks in the public interest. If we need to collect special category (sensitive) personal information, we rely upon reasons of substantial public interest (equality of opportunity or treatment). 

Who we share your personal information with 

  • Department for Education (DfE) (statutory for early years funding and policy monitoring) 
  • Birmingham City Council Management Information & Finance (to provide funding) 
  • Other local authorities, or other early years settings, to resolve duplicate claims and funding queries 
  • Birmingham City Council teams working to improve outcomes for children and young people 
  • Commissioned providers of local authority services (such as education services) 
  • Local multi-agency forums which provide SEND advice, support and guidance (such as EY Local Inclusion Forum Team (EY LIFT) 
  • Schools that you attend after leaving us 
  • Partner organisations Information Sharing Agreement, where necessary, which may include Police, school nurses, doctors and mental health workers and Birmingham Community Health NHS Foundation Trust 
  • Contracted providers of services (such as external photographers and catering providers) where consent has been given 
  • Debt collecting agencies (Where fees have not been paid, as are due to us, and the child no longer attends our setting) 

We will share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities if required by applicable law.

The National Pupil Database (NPD) 

We are required by law, to provide information about our pupils to the DfE as part of statutory data collections such as the school census and early years’ census. Some of this information is then stored in the NPD. The law that allows this is the Education (Information About Individual Pupils) (England) Regulations 2013.

The NPD is owned and managed by the DfE and contains information about pupils in schools in England. It provides invaluable evidence on educational performance to inform independent research, as well as studies commissioned by the DfE. It is held in electronic format for statistical purposes. This information is securely collected from a range of sources including schools, local authorities and awarding bodies.

The DfE may share information about our pupils from the NPD with third parties who promote the education or well-being of children in England by:

  • conducting research or analysis
  • producing statistics
  • providing information, advice or guidance

The DfE has robust processes in place to ensure the confidentiality of our data is maintained and there are stringent controls in place regarding access and use of the data. Decisions on whether DfE releases data to third parties are subject to a strict approval process and based on a detailed assessment of:

  • who is requesting the data
  • the purpose for which it is required
  • the level and sensitivity of data requested: and
  • the arrangements in place to store and handle the data

To be granted access to pupil information, organisations must comply with strict terms and conditions covering the confidentiality and handling of the data, security arrangements and retention and use of the data.

Your Rights 

Under the GDPR you have rights which you can exercise free of charge which allow you to: 

  • Know what we are doing with your information and why we are doing it 
  • Ask to see what information we hold about you (Subject Access Request) 
  • Ask us to correct any mistakes in the information we hold about you 
  • Object to direct marketing 
  • Make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office 
  • Withdraw consent (if applicable) 

Depending on our reason for using your information you may also be entitled to: 

  • Ask us to delete information we hold about you 
  • Have your information transferred electronically to yourself or to another organisation 
  • Object to decisions being made that significantly affect you 
  • Object to how we are using your information 
  • Stop us using your information in certain ways 

We will always seek to comply with your request however we may be required to hold or use your information to comply with legal duties. Please note: your request may delay or prevent us delivering a service to you. 

For further information about your rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, see the guidance from the UK Information Commissioners Office (ICO) on individuals’ rights under the General Data Protection Regulation. 

If you would like to exercise a right, please contact Parveen Sidhu at Parveen@smartstartchildcare.co.uk

Keeping your personal information secure 

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality. 

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so. 

Who to Contact and Where to go for Further Information 

Please contact Parveen Sidhu to exercise any of your rights, or if you have a complaint about why your information has been collected, how it has been used or how long we have kept it for. 

If you would like to get a copy of the information about you that Birmingham City council shares with the DfE or how they use your information, please contact Information Management Team infogovernance@birmingham.gov.uk

For more information about services for young children, please go to: https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/info/20130/childcare_and_early_years  or Birmingham City council website the KCC website at https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/

The General Data Protection Regulation also gives you right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner who may be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/concerns or telephone 03031 231113. 

For further information about how the Department for Education uses your information: 

To find out more about the pupil information we share with the DfE, for the purpose of data collections, go to https://www.gov.uk/guidance/early-years-census 

To find out more about the NPD, go to https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-pupil-database-user-guide-and-supporting-information. 

For more information about the DfE’s data sharing process, please visit: 

https://www.gov.uk/data-protection-how-we-collect-and-share-research-data

For information about which organisations the department has provided pupil information, (and for which project), please visit the following website: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-pupil-database-requests-received 

To contact DfE: https://www.gov.uk/contact-dfe