Privacy Notice

This privacy notice sets out how Boost; Lancashire’s Business Growth Hub (Boost) uses and protects any information that you give us when you use this website.

Boost Business Lancashire

Boost comprises of a partnership between Lancashire County Council, Growth Lancashire, Growth Company and Selnet supported by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and the Department for Business and Trade.

Boost Business Lancashire is led by Lancashire County Council and in order to comply with articles 13 and 14 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), where personal data relating to a data subject is collected, Lancashire County Council would like to provide you with the following details.

Identity and Contact Details of the Data Controller

Lancashire County Council, PO Box 78 County Hall, Fishergate, Preston, Lancashire, PR1 8X

Contact Details of the Data Protection Officer

Our Data Protection Officer is Paul Bond. You can contact him at DPO@lancashire.gov.uk or Lancashire County Council, PO Box 78 County Hall, Fishergate, Preston, Lancashire, PR1 8XJ

Purposes for Processing

Boost’s mission is to serve both new and existing businesses to grow job opportunities and skills across the county. Boost provides business support and economic development services. Our team of business advisors offer impartial advice to help businesses realise their potential either through specialist in-house support or through our extensive network of public and private sector partners.

Category of Personal Data being processed

Personal data (information relating to a living, identifiable individual)
Special category personal data (racial, ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation)

Legal Basis for Processing Personal Data

The legal basis for processing your personal data, in accordance with the UK GDPR is:

(a) Consent: the individual has given clear consent for you to process their personal data for a specific purpose.

Where a client wishes to sign up to receive specific information from the stakeholders, such as a newsletter, consent must be gained, verbal or written. This consent must adhere to UK GDPR rules around consent management.

(f) Legitimate Interests: pursued by the controller or by a third party.

Legitimate Interests would apply where the data subject directly engages with one or more partner for the purposes of delivering a support service to them. Boost understands that any further sharing of personal data is their responsibility as a data controller, and they must identify a clear lawful basis for any onward sharing of personal data.

Legal Basis for Processing Special Categories of Personal Data

The legal basis for processing your special categories of personal data, in accordance with the UK GDPR is:

The data subject has given explicit consent to the processing of this personal data.

Where one of more participating organisations requests the ethnicity or disability status of a business owner, explicit consent will be sought. It will be the responsibility for each Boost provider who seeks explicit consent to ensure that an appropriate consent form is in place. The partner will explain to the data subject the reason they are seeking to capture this information and request consent.

Recipients of the Data

Boost comprises of a partnership between:

Lancashire County Council (data controller and lead organisation for this partnership)
Growth Lancashire (joint data controller)
Growth Company (joint data controller)
Selnet (joint data controller)

The project is supported by the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. We need to share the information with our funding providers; the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and the Department for Business and Trade.

Boost partners with the following local authorities (each acts as a data controller for personal data they receive):

Blackburn with Darwen Council
Burnley Borough Council
Blackpool Borough Council
Chorley Council
Fylde Borough Council
Hyndburn Borough Council
Lancaster City Council
Pendle Borough Council
Preston City Council
Ribble Valley Borough Council
Rossendale Borough Council
South Ribble Borough Council
West Lancashire Borough Council
Wyre Council

Wider organisations and processors may have access to information in order to offer the client the best business support service. Wider partners and processors may include any number of the following organisations – East Lancashire Chambers of Commerce, University of Central Lancashire, Lancaster University, Edge Hill University, University of Sheffield, Innovation Agency, North West Aerospace Alliance, Northern Automotive Alliance, People Plus, Lancs Forum.

Information we share

Each Boost partner organisation will only share the necessary and relevant information required to provide your business with help, advice and relevant funding opportunities.

Company Name
Company Address
Company contact details
Company Personnel Contact details
Nature of business
Individual Client Name
Individual Client Contact details
Details of the client journey/hours spent
Ethnicity of business owner
Disability of business owner
Age of business owner
Gender
Employment status
Nature of business enquiry
Notes relating to business enquiry
Outcome of any grant fund awarded including amount
Outcome of any job creation including details of the job (ethnicity, gender)
Turnover
Gross Value Added (GVA)

This information is required to monitor external funding such as the European Regional Development Fund and the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. Funding bodies require details of the clients that have been assisted by partners as evidence for claims.

Data relating to the client journey and the hours the client has spent working with the project is required to comply with the State Aid De Minimis and Subsidy Control regulations for monitoring that the client hasn’t been supported above the threshold. This legislation is enforced across all Government or European funded business support projects.

The benefits of information sharing includes giving all partners involved a clearer picture of the clients’ requirements and tracking which services the client has received. Failure to appropriately share information would result in clients having to repeat their requirements to various organisations within the partnership. This would lead to the partnership not being able to track the allocated funding and support that the client has received from other partners.

Any Transfers to Another Country

GDPR restricts transfers of personal data outside the EEA, unless the rights of the individuals in respect of their personal data is protected in another way, or one of a limited number of exceptions applies. We will not transfer personal data outside the EEA.

Retention Periods

The Boost Partner will only store information received from their involvement with you for as long as is legally required or in situations where there is no legal retention period they will follow established best practice. At the end of the retention period electronical data will be deleted and any physical files will be confidentially disposed of.

File Type	Description	Security	Retention Period
Email	Emails held in Outlook that haven't been exported or moved elsewhere	Encryption used when emailing personal data to partners.	1 year from the date received and then automatically deleted.
Data record (fields as listed above under "What data will be shared")	Database records containing the fields required by funding provider ERDF	Data held on a password protected system which is regularly backed up	For UKSPF funded projects, this is currently estimated to be summer 2030.
Hard copy file	Forms and other paperwork regarding your support under the ERDF funded scheme	Files are mainly stored securely in locked cabinets and due card and attention is taken to avoid unlawful or unauthorised disclosure while in use	For UKSPF funded products, this is currently estimated to be summer 2030.

Your Rights

You have certain rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), these are the right:

to be informed via Privacy Notices such as this.
to withdraw your consent. If we are relying on your consent to process your data then you can remove this at any point.
of access to any personal information the council holds about yourself. To request a copy of this information you must make a subject access request in writing. You are entitled to receive a copy of your personal data within 1 calendar month of our receipt of your subject access request. If your request is complex then we can extend this period by a further two months, if we need to do this we will contact you. You can request a subject access request, either via a letter to Information Governance Team, address below.
of rectification, we must correct inaccurate or incomplete data within one month.
to erasure. You have the right to have your personal data erased and to prevent processing unless we have a legal obligation to process your personal information.
to restrict processing. You have the right to suppress processing. We can retain just enough information about you to ensure that the restriction is respected in future.
to data portability. We can provide you with your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine readable form when asked.
to object. You can object to your personal data being used for profiling, direct marketing or research purposes.
in relation to automated decision making and profiling, to reduce the risk that a potentially damaging decision is taken without human intervention.

If you want to exercise any of these rights then you can do so by contacting:

Information Governance Team
Lancashire County Council
PO Box 78
County Hall
Preston
PR1 8XJ

Or email: dataprotection@lancashire.gov.uk

To ensure that we can deal with your request as efficiently as possible you will need to include your current name and address, proof of identity (a copy of your driving licence, passport or two different utility bills that display your name and address), as much detail as possible regarding your request so that we can identify any information we may hold about you, this may include your previous name and address, date of birth and what council service you were involved with.

Further information

If you would like more information concerning Boost and their work then please contact info@boostbusinesslancashire.co.uk

If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, you can contact DPO@lancashire.gov.uk

If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are processing your personal data not in accordance with the law you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).