Southend-on-Sea City Council collects and processes all information in line with the relevant Data Protection Legislation including the DPA 2018 and the GDPR. We are the data controller for your information which means we control how your personal information is processed and for what purposes.

Special Education Needs and Disability (SEND) services provide support, advice and guidance to families of children with SEND living in the area. As a local authority we have a duty under the Children and Families Act 2014 to ensure that this service is offered.

To ensure that the council provides you with an efficient and effective service we will sometimes need to share your information between teams within the council as well as with our partner organisations that support the delivery of the service you may receive. In this case, the information collected will be shared with other relevant agencies which may include, but it not limited to:

  • Other Local Authorities
  • Schools and settings
  • Family Centres
  • Integrated Care Systems/Integrated Care Boards (ICS/ICBs)
  • Department of Education (DfE) - to inform local funding allocations

We will only ever share your information if we are satisfied that our partners or suppliers have sufficient measures in place to protect your information in the same way that we do We will never share your information for marketing purposes.

Retention periods

We will only keep your information for the minimum period necessary in relation to the purposes for which they are collected. For those with Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities, data will be retained for 25 years from date of birth, 75 years for Children Looked After records, and 100 years for Adoption records.