Who we are

The legal basis for processing your information

What information we hold about you and why

Who we share your information with

How long we keep your information

Your rights

1. Who we are

The Public Services Ombudsman for Wales has legal powers to consider complaints about public services in Wales.  For example, you may complain that you have been treated unfairly or received a bad service through some failure on the part of the body providing it.  We can consider complaints about most public bodies in Wales.

We can also look at complaints that councillors (including community councillors) have broken their local authority’s code of conduct.

2. The legal basis for processing your information

We need to comply with our legal obligations as a public body under the information request legislation.  For example, the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Environmental Information Regulations 2004, the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.

3. What information we hold about you and why

When you contact us, we create an electronic record on our database to help us manage and respond to your request or enquiry.  We collect the following personal information about you:

• Your name and contact details so that we can respond to your request or enquiry.
• The details of your request or enquiry. Read more about how we consider Freedom of Information requests or enquiries under the Data Protection Act.
• If your request relates to a complaint that you have made to us, we locate information from your complaint record. Read more about how we handle your information when you make a complaint to us.

4. Who we share your information with

We only share your request and our response when the law requires us to do so.  For example, if you complain to the Information Commissioner about the way we have handled your request.

5. How long we keep your information

We will keep the information only for as long as we need it and will depend on what it is being used for.

6. Your rights

You have the following rights over the information we hold about you:

• to request access to your information
• to ask that we update, complete or correct your information, if it is inaccurate or incomplete
• the right to object to our using your information in certain circumstances, and
• the right to limit our use of it in certain circumstances.

You can contact us to exercise your rights or to make a complaint about how your information is used by emailing Information.Request@ombudsman.wales

If you are unhappy with the way in which we have used your information you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).