Privacy notice for Freedom of Information and Environmental Information requests

The Food Standards Agency is known as the ‘Controller’ of the personal data provided to us.

Why we need it

We need to collect this information for the purposes of administering, processing and responding to requests made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 or the Environmental Information Regulations 2004.

We do this to comply with our legal obligations. We will not collect any personal data from you which we do not need.

Providing us with this information is a statutory requirement and failure to provide the information would result in us being unable to provide a response to a request made under the legislation.

How and where we store your data and who we may share it with 

We may be requested to share the details of your request and our response to it with central government under a 'round robin' process, which applies where several public authorities have received the same request from the same requester. Beyond this, no third parties external to the FSA have access to your personal data unless the law allows them to do so. In line with this commitment, your personal data may be passed to the Information Commissioner's Office.

We keep personal data only for as long as needed to carry out these functions, and in line with our retention policy. This means that personal data will be retained for five years after case closure (or seven years where we consider the case is precedent setting).

For more information, please see the How and where we store your data and who we may share it with section in our Personal Information Charter. 

International transfers 

For more information on international transfers, please see the International transfers section in our Personal Information Charter. 

EU citizens 

For more information on EU Citizens Privacy Notice, please see the EU citizens section in our Personal Information Charter. 

Your rights

For more information on your rights, please see the Your rights section in our Personal Information Charter. 

Contact us 

If you have any queries concerning this Privacy Notice, your personal information or any questions on our use of the information, please email our Data Protection Officer in the FSA, who is the Information Management and Security Team Leader using the address below.