Coroner service privacy notice - Privacy notices

Service

Lincolnshire County Council provide support services to the coroner, to ensure that coroners services are provided in Lincolnshire.

The senior coroner for Greater Lincolnshire is Paul D Smith.

Contact the coroner's service

General information

This privacy policy explains how the HM Coroner's office obtains personal information, what it is used for, who it might be shared with and why and how long it is kept, our disclaimer, and access to personal information.

The information contained on this page is © Copyright His Majesty's Coroner for Lincolnshire and relates only to the coroner’s service.

Disclaimer

The contents of these pages are provided as an information guide only. No responsibility is accepted by or on behalf of His Majesty's Coroner for Greater Lincolnshire for any errors, omissions, or misleading statements on these pages or any site to which these pages connect, including any feature or aspect of such site or pages, whether provided by the Coroner, Lincolnshire County Council, any Departments or Agencies of His Majesty's Government or by any organisation, company or individual. No mention of any organisation, company or individual, whether on these pages or on other sites to which these pages are linked shall imply any approval or warranty as to the standing and capability of any such organisations, company or individual on the part of the HM Coroner for Greater Lincolnshire.

Coroner general data protection regulations privacy notice

We will hold your data in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations and any current UK Data Protection Act.

HM Coroner for Greater Lincolnshire is the data controller and can be contacted at:

HM Coroner’s Office
The Myle Cross Centre
92 Macaulay Drive
Lincoln
LN2 4EL

Email: lincscoroner@lincolnshire.gov.uk

We will process your data to

Determine who the deceased was, when, where and how they died, and to record the registration particulars to enable death certification. We are a Court of Record, and we progress from preliminary enquiries to Investigation to Inquest, as the evidence is considered. Inquests are public hearings.

Data we process

Data of the deceased, comprising comprehensive information, including circumstances of death, cause of death and medical history, together with identification evidence from 3rd parties (visual, DNA, fingerprinting, odontology)

Data of the living, associated with the deceased, including family (next of kin) and legal representatives, comprising contact data and witness statements. Section 47 of The Coroners and Justice Act 2009 defines Interested Persons.

Why we can process your data

The Senior Coroner must investigate all deaths which are violent or unnatural, where the cause of death is unknown, and where a death occurs while in custody or state detention.

Personal data is collected to enable us to administer the running of the Coroner's Office and carry out our statutory responsibilities under the different legislative frameworks.

In addition, we collect personal data for:

  • service delivery
  • statistical analysis and reporting
  • safeguarding (future prevention of death)

Visitors to the website

No personal data is gathered automatically by HM Coroner for Greater Lincolnshire when someone visits the website.

Use of cookies

This website may use cookies from time to time but only to make your web experience better. We do not track individual web visitors.

Sharing your information

Data will be shared with the Senior Coroner, Area Coroner, Assistant Coroners, Coroner’s Officers, Coroner’s Administrator and Coroner’s Court Officer, and will inevitably involve the family, interested persons and the relevant stakeholders. Stakeholders can include:

  • GPs
  • hospitals
  • ambulance service
  • funeral directors
  • registrars
  • pathologists
  • toxicologists
  • other coroners
  • police
  • local authority
  • Human Tissue Authority (HTA)
  • emergency planners
  • mental health
  • alcohol and drug teams
  • safeguarding boards and teams
  • family members

We may share your data with organisations we have a contract with in order to provide the service, for example, IT providers, or Lincolnshire County Council which acts as our administration team.

We will not sell your personal data to any other external organisation or individual.

We will not share it with any other third party unless required to do so by law, for example, law enforcement agencies such as the Police, HMRC, Immigration, the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Where we store your data

Data is held securely on a server in the UK. We have an information assurance framework in place which ensures that appropriate technical and organisational measures are in place to help keep your information secure and to reduce the risk of loss and theft. All members of staff operate in accordance with Lincolnshire County Council's information governance and information security policies.

Access to information is strictly controlled based on the role of the professional.

All members of staff are required to undertake regular data protection training and must comply with a variety of security policies designed to keep your information secure.

In the case of a death concerning a foreign national, we are obligated under Vienna Convention to notify the relevant Consular Office or Embassy, or the Police may do so. Also there may be an exchange of information in the event of a death abroad. This will be done using secure, encrypted email, secure transfer sites or passworded documents. 

Some older cases are stored securely in our local archives service.

How long we will keep your data

Coroner’s records must be retained for at least 15 years under Regulation 27 of The Coroners (Investigations) Regulations 2013.

Records are disposed securely via the local authority’s secure confidential waste disposal contractor.

Access to personal information

You can find out if we hold any of your personal data by making a ‘subject access request’. If we do hold information about you we will:

  • give you a description of it
  • tell you why we are holding it
  • tell you who it could be disclosed to
  • tell you where we got it from 
  • let you have a copy of the data

To make a request for any data we may hold on you, you can email the address below. It is free of charge to submit a request. We may only refuse if it is manifestly unfounded or excessive. We have a month to answer you.

If we do hold information about you, you can ask us to

  • correct any mistakes
  • delete data we hold on you that we no longer have a legitimate need to use
  • restrict the use of the data temporarily if you think it is wrong or we should not have it
  • stop using your data that does not have a legal or contractual obligation
  • ask for any data that you have provided to us or we have observed, that has been automatically processed, under consent or contract, to be exported to another company or yourself, in a machine-readable format. We currently do not undertake any automated processing of your data; and
  • prevent any fully automated decisions involving your data. We do not currently use any fully automated decision-making techniques

Changes to this privacy notice

We keep our privacy notice under regular review.

Complaints or queries

We encourage people to bring it to our attention if they think that our collection or use of information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate, or if we have had a personal data breach. We would also welcome any suggestions for improving our procedures.

If you wish to make a request or make a complaint about how we have handled your personal data email:

Alternatively, you can contact the Senior Coroner at:

  • HM Senior Coroner for Greater Lincolnshire, Myle Cross Centre, Macaulay Drive, Lincoln, LN2 4EL
  • or, telephone: 01522 552500

Email the Data Protection Officer at:

or you can contact the council at:

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

You may also be interested in

Customer privacy notice