Health and Nature Fund Privacy Notice
We keep this privacy notice under regular review and was last updated on 24 November 2025.
Kent County Council respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy notice will inform you as to how we look after your personal data and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.
Who we are
Kent County Council collects, uses and is responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are regulated under the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (‘UK GDPR’) and the Data Protection Act 2018. We are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information.
KCC is distributing a Health and Nature Fund to organisations to enable provision of nature-based wellbeing interventions. We are making this investment into community organisations to increase green preventative mental health provision particularly in areas of high need. The first grants will be assessed in February 2026 and awarded in March 2026.
Additional funding will support the staging of an accredited Nature Based Practice training by a suitable provider. This training will run from February-September 2026.
Our Data Protection Officer is Benjamin Watts.
The personal information we collect and use
Information collected by us
When we distribute grants to community organisations to enable them to provide nature-based wellbeing activities the organisations will need to collect contact details from you in order to have a register of who is attending session. If you think it is relevant you will be given the opportunity to provide information about your health.
Basic information typically collected for a register may include your name, address, email address, mobile phone number as well as emergency contact details. This is termed ‘personal data’. Relevant health information which you may provide to community organisations in order to keep you safe while undertaking activities is termed ‘special category data’ and is personal data which is more sensitive and is treated with extra care and protection.
We will also ask activity providers to collect information about your wellbeing in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the activity but you and your personal details will not identifiable on this survey or able to be connected with you.
In the course of staging the training in Nature Based Practice, the training provider will collect the following personal information when you provide it to them in order to have a register of who is attending training as well as any relevant health information which you think relevant for the organisers to keep you safe.
Personal data will typically include your name, address, email address, mobile phone number as well as emergency contact details.
‘Special category data’ (personal data which is more sensitive and is treated with extra care and protection) when you provide it to us may include relevant medical information which the training provider may need to keep you safe.
How we use your personal information
We use your personal information for the following purposes:
- Organisations we grant fund will collect information from you to register you on the activity. Organisations such as Kent Wildlife Trust and Countryside Management Partnerships will collect this data on our behalf. Provider organisations will be responsible for processing personal data by way of a register and will hold their own privacy notices, examples of which are linked here:
- Provider organisations are required, as a condition of funding to undertake wellbeing surveys with participants before and after the intervention programme. The surveys will be anonymous, and personal data will not be able to be cross referenced with this data. The anonymised survey data will be shared with Kent County Council.
- Registering of participants on Nature Based Practice training will be undertaken by the training provider, Circle of Life Discovery who will be responsible for processing personal data in the form of a register. The contact details: name, address, email address, mobile phone number only (not including medical information) of participants will be shared with Kent County Council in order that the Health and Nature programme has information about trained practitioners.
Reasons we can collect and use your personal information
We rely on Public Task (Article 6(1)(e)) as the lawful basis on which we collect and use your personal data.
We rely on Public Health (Article 9(2)(i)) as the lawful basis on which we collect and use your special categories of personal data.
We rely on the Public Health condition from Schedule 1 in the Data Protection Act 2018 when relying on Article 9(2)(i) to process your special category data.
We take the following appropriate safeguards in respect of your special category data when relying on the conditions above:
- we maintain a record of our processing in our ‘Record of Processing Activities’ and record in it any reasons for deviating from the periods in our Retention Schedule.
The provision of contact and relevant health information is required from you to enable us to coordinate and evaluate nature-based interventions and stage nature-based training.
As we have a contractual basis for collecting your personal data if you do not provide contact and relevant health information, we may not be able to provide the service to the individual.
How long your personal data will be kept
We will hold your personal information for:
- the period of the nature-based intervention.
- for 2 years from the staging of the nature-based training
Who we share your personal information with
- Anonymised wellbeing data will be collected by the nature-based intervention provider and shared with Kent County Council to provide impact reporting for the overall programme.
- The contact details of participants of the nature-based training will be shared with Kent County Council by the training provider.
Contact details and health information about participants of nature-based interventions will not be shared with Kent County Council by the provider.
We will share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities if required by applicable law or in connection with legal proceedings.
We will share personal information with our legal and professional advisers in the event of a dispute, complaint or claim. We rely on Article 9(2)(f) where the processing of special category data is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims or whenever courts are acting in their judicial capacity.
Your rights
Under the UK GDPR you have a number of rights which you can access free of charge which allow you to:
- know what we are doing with your information and why we are doing it
- ask to see what information we hold about you
- ask us to correct any mistakes in the information we hold about you
- object to direct marketing
- make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Depending on our reason for using your information you may also be entitled to:
- object to how we are using your information
- ask us to delete information we hold about you
- have your information transferred electronically to yourself or to another organisation
- object to decisions being made that significantly affect you
- stop us using your information in certain ways.
We will always seek to comply with your request however we may be required to hold or use your information to comply with legal duties. Please note: your request may delay or prevent us delivering a service to you.
For further information about your rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, see the guidance from the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on individuals’ rights under the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation.
If you would like to exercise a right, please contact [the Information Resilience and Transparency Team at mailto:data.protection@kent.gov.uk.]
Keeping your personal information secure
We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access
to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.
Who to Contact
Please contact the Information Resilience and Transparency Team at data.protection@kent.gov.uk to exercise any of your rights, or if you have a complaint about why your information has been collected, how it has been used or how long we have kept it for.
You can contact our Data Protection Officer, Benjamin Watts, at dpo@kent.gov.uk.
The United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation also gives you the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner who may be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/or telephone 0303 123 1113. For further information visit https://www.kent.gov.uk/about-the-council/