How we use your information
Aberdeen City Council collects and maintains information about you and your child for the purposes of:
- assessing entitlement for free school meals and for providing any resulting school meals or free school meal vouchers
- assessing entitlement for school clothing grants and for administering the payment of any grant awarded
- assessing entitlement for educational maintenance allowance (where relevant) for administering the payment of any allowance awarded, and (where necessary, administering the recovery of any allowance paid
- Communicating with you about your educational entitlements and maintaining our records
This information includes:
- Name
- Address
- Contact details (including phone numbers and email addresses)
- Information about household income and benefits
- School
If you are happy with us doing so, we can use information you may have already given us about Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction, to assess and award (if applicable) free school meals, school clothing grants and educational maintenance allowance.
Your data will be stored on our customer platform, which holds your application, and our school information management system.
Where we send vouchers by text message or email, this will be done using the Groupcall text service. We have contractual agreements in place with these third parties to ensure they manage your data properly.
How we share your information
The information you provide will also be used to update your contact details across the Council to ensure we maintain accurate and up to date information.
Educational maintenance allowance is a programme funded by the Scottish Government and administered by Aberdeen City Council. We share information to the Scottish Government in accordance with the requirements in the Scottish Government EMA (Scotland) Business Model.
How long we keep your information for
Free School Meals
Once your application has been decided, your application and related information will be kept by us for the current financial year plus 6 years. Incomplete or unsuccessful applications will be kept for 6 months from the date of application. For more information about how we manage education records, please refer to our Education Records Privacy Notice. We will keep anonymised data beyond this period for the purposes of auditing service provision and quality assurance.
School Clothing Grants
Once your application has been decided, your application and related information will be kept by us for the current financial year plus 6 years. Incomplete or unsuccessful applications will be kept for 6 months from the date of application. We will keep anonymised data beyond this period for the purposes of auditing service provision and quality assurance.
Educational Maintenance Allowance
Once your application has been decided, your application and related information will be kept by us for the current financial year plus 4 years. Incomplete or unsuccessful applications will be kept for 6 months from the date of application. We will keep anonymised data beyond this period for the purposes of auditing service provision and quality assurance.
Your rights
You have rights to your data, including the right to ask for a copy of it. See more information about the rights you have, how they work in practice, and the contact details of our Data Protection Officer. You also have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office. They are the body responsible for making sure organisations like the Council handle your data lawfully.
Our legal basis
Aberdeen City Council is the Data Controller for the personal data we use to administer educational entitlements. Wherever the Council processes personal data, we need to make sure we have a legal basis for doing so in data protection law.
The Council considers the provision of free school meals as part of its public task under Section 53 of the Education (Scotland) Act 1980, as amended by the Schools (Health Promotion and Nutrition) (Scotland) Act 2007 to take steps to make sure that anyone who is entitled to a free school lunch receives one.
The Council considers the provision for assessing the award and management of school clothing grants as part of our legal obligation under the Education (Scotland) Act 1980.
The Council considers the provision of Education Maintenance Allowances as part of our public task under the terms of the Education Maintenance Allowances (Scotland) Regulations 2007.
In administering these entitlements, we are also likely to process special categories of personal data. The Council does this because processing is necessary for the reasons of substantial public interest.