How We Will Use Your Information
Who We Are
The Senedd Commission is the data controller of the information you provide, and will ensure it is protected and used in line with data protection legislation.
Any queries regarding our use of your information should be sent to the Senedd’s Data Protection Officer:
data.protection@senedd.wales
Data Protection Officer
Welsh Parliament
Tŷ Hywel
Cardiff
CF99 1SN
0300 200 6494
What information Are We Collecting?
Your postal address, e-mail address, telephone number, place of learning and date of birth will be used to process your nomination to stand as a candidate in the Welsh Youth Parliament (“WYP”) elections in November 2024. These details will not be made public.
Your name, candidate statement, photo, constituency of choice and the three key issues you have chosen will appear on the WYP website and will also be shared with all those young people who have registered to vote in the constituency you are standing for election in.
Where applicable, we may also need to process information on any criminal convictions, cautions or orders in relation to relevant offences that you may have or are subject to. If you indicate that you have a criminal conviction, have been subject to a caution or have been subject to an order in relation to a relevant offence, we will need to contact you for further information in order to ascertain whether you are eligible to stand in the WYP election. We will only collect information that is necessary for us to reach a decision and this information will not be made public.
Assembly Voting are the organisation managing the election process on behalf of the Senedd Commission (“the Commission”). Details of how Assembly Voting will use and protect your information is available https://assemblyvoting.com/privacy/
On the nomination page, you will also be given the opportunity to opt-in to receive WYP-related information beyond the scope of the election, including latest news and opportunities to contribute to the WYP’s work, such as through surveys and events. You do not have to opt-in to be able to register as a candidate in WYP elections, and can opt-out at any time as set out in the ‘Why are we collecting this information?’ section of this notice.
Why are we collecting this information?
Your information will be processed to enable us to successfully conduct WYP elections. The WYP is a key initiative that helps to enable the Senedd to engage with young people in Wales, reaffirms the Commission’s commitment to youth engagement and continues to strengthen our youth engagement strategy to invest in the future of Welsh democracy.
Your information will be used to register your details to stand for nomination in the WYP elections. Some candidate information will also be shared with the public and those who wish to vote in the election in order to enable them to make an informed choice about who they wish to vote for in the election.
Any information in relation to criminal convictions, cautions and orders to which you are subject will be used by the Commission to ascertain whether you are eligible to stand.
Who will have access?
The Commission uses a third party organisation called Assembly Voting to manage the WYP election process and they will store and process your information collected as part of the Nomination Form for this process. The Commission will also have access to and hold this information securely in case we need to contact you.
If you indicate in the Nomination Form that you have a criminal conviction, or are or have been subject to a caution or order in relation to a relevant offence, the Commission will need to collect some further information in relation to this in order to reach a decision as to whether you are eligible to stand in the WYP election. Assembly Voting will only have access to the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer provided as part of the Nomination Form in relation to criminal convictions, cautions or orders.
Any further information gathered by the Commission in order to enable us to make a decision about eligibility for standing will only be accessible by the Commission and will not be accessible or stored by Assembly Voting.
Will the information be shared or publicised?
Your name, candidate statement, photo, constituency of choice and the three key issues you have chosen will appear on the WYP website and be accessible to the public. This information may remain on the WYP website indefinitely. It will also be shared with all those young people who have registered to vote in the constituency you are standing for election in.
All other contact details, your date of birth and any information about criminal convictions, cautions and orders to which you are subject will be not be publicised or shared with any other third party unless we are obliged to do so by law.
Where will it be stored?
Assembly Voting will store data to which they have access on their secure ICT system located within the EEA and Switzerland. Further information as to how Assembly Voting will store that information is available in the link above.
Information stored by the Commission will be stored securely on our ICT systems which includes third party cloud services provided by Microsoft. Any transfer of data by Microsoft outside of the EEA is covered by contractual clauses under which Microsoft ensure that personal data is treated in line with European legislation. To find out more about how Microsoft will use your information, you can read their privacy statement here.
How long will we keep this information for?
All information collected as part of the Nomination Form will be stored on Assembly Voting’s secure servers located in the UK for the duration of the two year term after the election (4-24 November), after which they will be securely deleted.
The Commission will have access to the information you have submitted and will store it on its own servers for the duration of the two year term, after which it will be deleted.
This information is stored so that we are able to deal with any election disputes that may arise during the third WYP term, including contacting reserve candidates in the event that the first past the post candidate steps down for any reason. It will also be used for the purpose of processing your nomination, and for contacting you during the nomination, election and member announcement period, and third WYP term which ends in April 2027.
As indicated above, the Commission will need to collect further information from you if you indicate that you have a criminal conviction, or are or have been subject to a caution or order in relation to a relevant offence. Following a discussion with you, a limited summary note will be produced. This note will record some of the information you provide that is required by us in order to reach a decision about your eligibility to stand as a candidate in the WYP election, as well as information about our decision-making where relevant. Information that is not necessary to reach a decision and information about third parties will not be recorded or retained.
Regardless of the decision taken by the Commission in relation to your eligibility to stand as a candidate, the information you provide as part of the Nomination Form will be retained in line with our usual retention period, i.e. for the duration of the two year term.
In terms of eligibility decisions, if a candidate to whom a summary note relates (as described above) is deemed to be eligible to stand in the WYP election and is subsequently elected as a member of the WYP, that summary note will be retained for the duration of the relevant WYP term. This is primarily so that we can refer to it during that WYP term if required (i.e. the third WYP term ending in April 2027), such as if an incident occurs which requires us to refer to those details. At the end of this period, the information contained in that summary note will be deleted.
Summary notes relating to candidates who are deemed eligible to stand in the WYP election but whom are not subsequently elected as a member of the WYP will be retained for 6 months following the end of the WYP election, at which point the information contained in that summary note will be deleted.
Your Rights
You have certain rights over the information we hold. These include:
- the right 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.
If you would like to engage any of the rights that you have under data protection legislation, please contact the data.protection@senedd.wales.
Our legal bases for collecting, holding and using your personal information
Data protection law sets out various legal bases which allow us to collect, hold and use your personal information. For the purpose of the personal information you provide, we rely on the fact that the processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest.
The WYP is not a legal entity itself, but it has been set up to allow young people in Wales to make themselves heard and give young people first-hand experience of how politics works. It is an activity that promotes and supports democratic engagement.
The Commission also has a function to provide the Senedd with the services it requires for its purposes, and providing this platform for young people helps towards educating them about how the Senedd, as the national Parliament, operates and the work it is carrying out.
The Commission has a further function to promote public awareness of any current or pending system for the election of Members of the Senedd and can carry out programmes of education to promote public awareness of the election system. The carrying out of an election for the WYP helps to educate and promote the system for Senedd elections to young people by, for example, using Senedd electoral constituencies. The WYP has been adapted where necessary, such as to accommodate candidates nominated by partner organisations, rather than providing regional seats.
In addition, we offer the opportunity for you to subscribe to further updates about the WYP and its work. Should you opt-in, we will use your contact information to provide you with these updates. Your contact details are used in this way based on your agreement, known as ‘consent’.
You can opt-out at any time during the election period by logging in to your account and unchecking the box. Following the election period, you can opt-out by contacting us at hello@youthparliament.wales . To find out more about what we will do with your data when you opt-in, please see our full WYP privacy notice here.
We may process special category personal data if you choose to provide any, such as in your candidate statement or in your photograph. Special category personal data is defined as including data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation and data concerning health.
This data will be processed on the basis that it is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest, ordinarily read in conjunction with section 10(3) of, and paragraph 6 of Schedule 1 to, the Data Protection Act 2018. This is to enable us to process this data to the extent that we need to for the purposes of the WYP election, as well as allow you to stand on issues that may involve the processing of your special category personal data. Where special category personal data interacts with criminal offence data (see below), we may need to rely on paragraph 10 of Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 2018.
Finally, we will need to process your personal data relating to criminal convictions and offences, where applicable, in order to ascertain whether you are eligible to stand in the WYP election. This data will be processed on the basis that it is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest, read in conjunction with paragraphs 6 and 10 of Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 2018.
Request for Information
In the event of a request for information being made under access to information legislation, it may be necessary to disclose all or part of the information that you provide. We will only do this if we are required to do so by law.
How to Complain
You can complain to our Data Protection Officer if you are unhappy with how we have used your personal data. Contact details can be found above.
If, following a complaint, you remain dissatisfied with our response, you can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO’s contact details can be found on their website.