Privacy & Cookies Policy

Confidentiality/security

As our website and online services are delivered using https you can rest assured that any personal information you may submit is protected by a secure connected.

If you choose to access our online services your information be shared with other council services and partner organisations to ensure our records are kept accurate and help us to identify services or benefits you may be entitled to or interested in. We may also need to share your information for the prevention and detection of fraud and/or other crimes or as the law requires.

Any email including its content may be monitored and used by Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council for reasons of security and for monitoring internal compliance with Council policy. This includes the content of emails and attachments. For instance inappropriate or offensive content would be blocked. The contents of any e-mails to the Council may have to be disclosed to third parties under Data Protection legislation.

If you are using a public computer and do not wish others to be able to go back to view the details you have typed into a form on the web it is advisable to clear the contents of the form and your internet history before leaving the computer.

Virus protection

We make every effort to check and test the material on our site but its good practice to have an anti-virus programme on your device. We cannot accept any responsibility or liability for any loss, disruption or damage to your data or to your computer system, which may occur as a result of using material from our site.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site. Cookies that are used by this website are necessary in order for us to improve our website for all users. Cookies are not shared with any third parties.

These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited.

Most web browsers allow control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

We use the following cookies:

  • Strictly necessary cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our websites. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website.
  • Analytical/performance cookies. They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
  • Functionality cookies. These are used to recognise you when you return to our website. This enables us to personalise our content for you, remember your choices in forms, polls and site preferences, where available.
  • Targeting cookies. These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website (and the advertising displayed on it) more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose.

Note: We don’t directly store any targeting or tracking cookies of our own. However, we do use 3rd party services which may store these types of cookies.

You can find more information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them by clicking below:

You can block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access some parts or all of our site.

Advertising

Solihull MBC uses the Council Advertising Network (CAN) to deliver advertising across its website. CAN sources socially responsible digital advertising as an exclusive partner to local authorities.

CANs Privacy Policy explains how they use information collected via their advertising network, for example, when you click on an advertisement. The policy also explains how they protect your privacy and what you can do to opt out of some of their personalised services.

Live Chat

The information you provide via our Live Chat service will be stored on our systems against your name and address and will be used by us as a record of the conversation. It may also be used by us to help investigate your enquiry or improve our services. We may share this information with third parties if it is needed to help investigate or help you with your enquiry. All the information will be held in a secure environment and only authorised staff will be able to access it.