Privacy Statement

South Wairarapa District Council (SWDC) respects and protects the privacy of our customers and website users.

SWDC knows your privacy is important. This privacy statement outlines how and why SWDC collect and store your personal information; what it may be used for and with whom it can be shared with.

The collection and use of personal information by SWDC is regulated by the Privacy Act 2020. Under this Act, personal information may be collected only for a lawful purpose connected with a function or activity of the council and only if necessary, for that purpose. Such information must, as a general rule, be collected directly from the individual concerned and that person must be told why the information is needed. SWDC will not collect information from any person that we do not require for use.

South Wairarapa District Council will only use personal information provided by customers for the reasons stated. Personal information is used solely to respond to queries arising from our website and/or to provide individuals with information updates on council services which they have elected to receive. SWDC does not use personal information in any other way. SWDC does not provide personal information to third parties unless written permission is given by the customer concerned.

SWDC 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, to assist with the functions and services they provide
  • A third party, if required to do so under law or regulation, for the proceedings of a legal investigation
  • Any information, if that information is publicly available – e.g., 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 to the public in full including the submitter’s name.
  • Personal information related to ownership contained in our dog control database is kept strictly confidential in accordance with the Dog Control Act 1996.

SWDC may retain personal information collected on our active system and in our archives, for as long as we may require administratively, or as required by law. This is in accordance with Council retention and disposal schedule and statutory requirements.

In some cases, your personal information could be contained within a “protected record”. This includes submissions you may submit in relation to Bylaws, Annual Plans, and District or Regional plans. These personal details will be redacted from any response for information will not be supplied to any person. This is in accordance with the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987.

All enquiries about or formal requests for information in terms of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987, or the Privacy Act 2020 should be in writing to:

South Wairarapa District Council
PO Box 6
Martinborough

For more detailed information about the Privacy Act you can refer to the Privacy Commissioner’s website available here, https://www.privacy.org.nz/

If you are concerned that SWDC may have breached the Privacy Act or if you are not sure of our obligations, you can contact the Privacy Commissioner. Privacy Hotline: 0800 803 909.

IP address
An IP address is a number that’s automatically assigned to your computer whenever you’re surfing the world wide web. Web servers automatically identify your computer by its IP address. SWDC collects IP addresses for the purposes of system administration, to report aggregate information to our internal customers and to audit the use on the Council website. When visitors request pages from the Council, SWDC servers log the visitors’ IP addresses. It is not normal to link IP addresses to anything personally identifiable, which means that a user’s session will be logged, but the user remains anonymous.

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