Privacy statement

If you have any queries or concerns about this Privacy Statement or personal data Palmerston North City Council has collected, we are happy to respond or investigate.

Please contact us using one of the methods below.

Palmerston North City Council Privacy Officer
Email: privacy@pncc.govt.nz
Postal address: Private Bag 11034, Manawatū Mail Centre, Palmerston North 4442.

For more detailed information about our obligations and your rights under the Privacy Act, you can refer to the Privacy Commissioner's website or call the Privacy Commissioner's enquiry line. Phone: 0800 803 909

The personal information we collect may include your name, date of birth, address, email address, telephone numbers, and gender. It may also include information on your use of our services or facilities and any other information provided by you through your communications with us.

We may collect personal information about you as set out below.

When you or someone acting on your behalf provides information to us directly. For example, when you:

• apply for employment with us
• correspond with us in person, by letter, phone, text, email, instant messages, or other means of electronic communication
• complete and submit forms or applications for consents, licences, housing, approvals, permits, funding, or other authorisations
• use any of our services or facilities, including using and signing up for our apps, newsletters or service updates
• when you make an online payment using a payment processor utilised by us
• prepare and submit a written submission, request, or other feedback in relation to consents, licences, approvals, permits, funding, other authorisations, or in relation to any form of draft or proposed plan, policy, bylaw, or other document
• follow or post comments in response to our social media or other facilities, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

We may keep a record of any information you acquire from us.

We may monitor and record phone calls made to us or by us for quality control or staff training purposes.

We may collect personal information about you from other organisations, entities or persons, such as:

• our related organisations, including Council-Controlled Organisations
• our suppliers, which include organisations such as: Land Information New Zealand, QV, solicitors/conveyancers, the New Zealand Police, credit reporting agencies and other organisations, entities and persons where you have expressly authorised them to provide us with information.

CCTV

Closed Circuit Television (CCTV), is used in particular areas to monitor passenger and traffic movements, secure facilities such as libraries and recreation centres, and monitor public places in order to help reduce crime and anti-social behaviour, and to promote community safety.

Signage indicates where CCTV equipment is operating. CCTV footage will only be viewed by authorised people in accordance with the purpose noted above, or when checking that the system is operational. No attempt will be made to identify individuals from CCTV footage except in cases of reported or suspected incidents requiring investigation.

Body-worn cameras

Cameras are worn by our parking wardens and animal management officers as a deterrent to anti-social behaviour towards them and to provide a clear record of events if an altercation occurs. Staff will start recording when there is an imminent health and safety risk.

Body-worn cameras are always ‘on’, but not always recording. Cameras use a ‘Pre-record’ mode. Pre-record means that although video is being captured, it is not being stored. The only time this video is stored is if a staff member activates a recording. The last 30 seconds of video is clipped to the recording to add context to the video (e.g. how a situation unfolded prior to the staff member pressing record).

Staff are not required to advise that the body-worn camera is recording or seek consent when in a public place. Officers are issued a “Body-worn Camera Equipped” disclosure tag to wear when operating a body-worn camera.

Body-worn camera footage can be used as evidential material for any incidents. The footage is securely stored on Council systems, and only a limited number of authorised staff within council can access the footage.

Live streaming of Council meetings

In the interests of making our decision-making process transparent and accessible, most public Council meetings are broadcast live online and then made available on our website. You will know which meetings are being filmed as there will be a sign clearly stating this before you enter the meeting room. Most of the filming will cover elected members as they speak and debate at the meeting, however, the filming may also include shots of the public in the background and of anyone speaking at a public forum.

In some instances, your personal information may be transferred, and held, by service providers in New Zealand and overseas (for example, where it is stored using a cloud-based service).

Responses to online forms

When you respond to an online form on our site, we hold any information you have entered into these forms. This information is used to respond to issues you raise, correct information we hold, provide a service to you, or to inform decision making.

Read about how we use your information.

Read about how we share your information.

Online submission forms for consultations

All submissions (including name, but not contact details) may be provided in their entirety to elected members and made available to the public at our office and on our website. Personal information (including contact details) will be used for the administration of the consultation process, including informing you of the outcome of the consultation. All information collected will be held by Palmerston North City Council, 32 The Square, Palmerston North, with submitters having the right to access and correct personal information.

Resource Management Act submissions

When you make a submission under the Resource Management Act 1991 your personal details, including your name and addresses will be made publicly available. This is because, under the Act, any further submission supporting or opposing your submission must be forwarded to you as well as to us. There are limited circumstances when your submission or your contact details can be kept confidential. If you consider you have reasons why your submission or your contact details should be kept confidential please contact: privacy@pncc.govt.nz

Any engagement on pncc.govt.nz will include its own privacy statement, check for the individual privacy statement when making a submission or giving feedback.

Information collected

We may collect information about your visit to help us improve this website. This information is aggregated and doesn't identify you personally. It includes:

• your IP address
• the search terms you used
• the pages you accessed on our site and the links you clicked on
• the date and time you visited the site
• the referring site (if any) through which you clicked through to this site
• your operating system (eg Windows 10, Mac Mojave)
• the type of web browser you use (e.g. Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari)
• information about age, gender and interests
• other things like your screen resolution and the language setting of your browser.

Use of statistical information

The information referred to above will be viewable by the website administrator and certain other Palmerston North City Council staff. It may also be shared with other councils.

Tools and cookies on our website

We use technologies, such as cookies, to customise content and advertising, to provide social media features and to analyse traffic to the site.

Google Tag Manager

We use Google Tag Manager to manage tags on this website. Google Tag Manager is a service provided by Google and itself includes a cookie. You can view Google's privacy policy.

Google Analytics

pncc.govt.nz uses Google Analytics to measure which pages on our site attract the most interest and to inform our overall communications and engagement strategy to ensure we are engaging with a variety of different users. Google may use the data collected to contextualise and personalise the ads of its own advertising network.

If you would like to opt-out of any of Google Analytics function visit these currently available opt-outs for the web.

Facebook Ads conversion tracking (Facebook pixel)

Facebook Ads conversion tracking (Facebook pixel) is an analytics service provided by Facebook that connects data from the Facebook advertising network with actions performed on pncc.govt.nz. The Facebook pixel tracks conversions that can be attributed to ads on Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network.

You can find out how to control what Facebook collects on Facebook's data policy and privacy page, and you can opt out.

The personal information we collect from you, or someone acting on your behalf, may be used for any of the following purposes:

• To provide you with services or facilities including those you have requested and those our Council Controlled Organisations provide to you.
• To confirm your identity. This is to avoid inappropriate release or use of your information.
• To respond to correspondence or provide you with information you have requested.
• To process any consent, licence, approval, permit, or other authorisation for which you have applied.
• To process your application to use or register for any of our services or facilities, including our online services and to process payments received or made by the Council.
• To respond to your requests, enquiries, feedback, or for customer care related activities.
• To provide you with information about our (or our Council Controlled Organisations') events, news, services, or facilities we consider may be of interest to you.
• To comply with relevant laws and regulations.
• To carry out activities connected with the running of our business or operations such as personnel training, or testing and maintenance of computer and other systems.
• For any specific purpose that we notify you of at the time your personal information is collected.
• For general administrative and business purposes.

We take reasonable steps to make sure personal information is:

• protected against loss, damage, misuse and unauthorised access. We give restricted access to individuals who need personal information to help us perform our duties and obligations.
• accurate, up to date, complete, relevant, and not misleading.

We may disclose personal information about you to:

• any person engaged by the Council to provide products or services to you on our behalf, where your personal information is necessary for the provision of those products or services
• Council Controlled Organisations, in order to assist with the functions and services they provide
• a third party, if we are required to do so under laws or regulations, or in the course of legal proceedings or other investigations. This may include sharing CCTV footage with the New Zealand Police or other public sector agencies where criminal activity is reported or suspected. The New Zealand Police may also access live feeds from certain CCTV cameras from time to time for law enforcement, investigation, and emergency response purposes
• any person you authorise us to disclose your personal information to
• any person, if that information is publicly available, eg information held on property files or the rating information database
• Councillors and the public when you make a submission in relation to bylaws, annual plans, district or regional plans, or draft or proposed policies. Submissions are made available in full (including the submitter's name but not their contact details) on our website and at our main office.

If you do not provide us with all of the personal information about you that we request from you, we may not be able to adequately respond to your correspondence, process any applications you have submitted, provide the services or facilities you have requested, process payments, or otherwise deal with any requests or enquiries you have submitted.

We may retain all personal information we collect (on both our active systems and our archive systems) for as long as administratively necessary, in accordance with the Council's information retention and disposal schedule.

The Public Records Act 2005 requires us to retain protected records indefinitely. In some circumstances, your personal information may be included within a protected record, including submissions you make in relation to bylaws, annual plans, and district or regional planning instruments.

You may request confirmation of whether or not we hold any personal information about you, and you may request access to your personal information that we hold by emailing us at privacy@pncc.govt.nz or via the Privacy Commissioner's 'About Me' tool. Once we have verified your identity, we will provide you with confirmation and access, unless one of the grounds for refusal set out in the Privacy Act applies.

You may request that the personal information we hold about you be corrected by emailing us at. If we agree that your personal information is to be corrected, we will do so and we will also provide you with an amended record, if requested.

Your rights of access to and correction of any personal information we hold about you are subject to the procedures set out in the Privacy Act.

You are free to copy, distribute and adapt the material, as long as you attribute the work to Palmerston North City Council and follow the other licence terms.

Read the licence on the Creative Commons website

Note: Some material linked to, included in or referenced on this website is owned by people or organisations separate to Palmerston North City Council. This material retains the status given to it by the relevant copyright holder. The licence referred to above does not apply to such material, and no licence to use it is granted to a user of this website.

Attribution to the Palmerston North City Council should be in written form and not by reproduction of any such emblem, logo, or Coat of Arms.

How to attribute material

If you publish, distribute, or otherwise disseminate this work to the public without adapting it, use:

"Source: Palmerston North City Council and licensed by PNCC for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence."

If you adapt this work in any way or include it in a collection, and publish, distribute, or otherwise disseminate that adaptation or collection to the public, use:

"This work is based on/includes PNCC data, which is licensed by Palmerston North City Council for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence."

Who to contact about using material from this website

If you have questions about material from this website, email info@pncc.govt.nz.