Birth records privacy notice

This notice provides details of how Leeds City Council collects and uses information about births.

For more general information about how Leeds City Council uses your information, please refer to our privacy notice page.

What is this information?

Personal information about births in the City of Leeds is supplied to local authorities by NHS Digital and contains data provided at the time of registration of birth along with additional geographic information. Leeds City Council has a Data Access Agreement with NHS Digital and data are supplied in accordance with section 42(4) of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 as amended by section 287 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, and Regulation 3 of the Health Service (Control of Patient Information) Regulations 2002.

Information held includes date of birth, sex of child, birth weight, a birth in marriage indicator, country of birth of parents, occupation and socio-economic status of parents, address and postcode of mother, place of birth, a still birth indicator and age of mother.

Who uses this information?

The Leeds City Council Public Health Intelligence Team.

What do we do with this information?

This information is used for the purposes of statistical analysis, the monitoring of population health and demographic change in the county, and to inform the planning and commissioning (buying) of health services.

This information is used specifically to identify patterns and trends in birth rates, low birth weight and still births, highlighting differences between geographic areas, age, sex and other characteristics. It is also used to identify differences between areas and inform the planning and targeting of health, care and public health services.

This information is used in the Annual Public Health Report, Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (which in turn informs the Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy and local commissioning plans), and health needs assessments. Other uses include the monthly monitoring of trends in birth rates, analysis of the distribution and relationship between place of residence and place of birth, the monitoring of still birth rates, health and wellbeing and public health outcomes reports, community profiles, and population projections.

The term 'person identifiable data' relates to any data that could potentially identify a specific individual. The following fields in the Birth Record are classified as person identifiable:

• address
• place of birth
• postcode
• usual residence of mother
• postcode of place of birth of child
• NHS number of child
• date of birth of child

These identifiable data are processed by Leeds City Council for specific purposes including determining catchment areas, distances and drive times for providers of fertility and maternity services, and to monitor trends in monthly births to identify patterns in birth rate across the year. For other purposes, a pseudonymised version of the dataset is used.

No personal-identifiable information is published, and numbers and rates in published reports based on counts fewer than five are removed to further protect confidentiality and anonymity.

Why do we use this information?

This information is used to ensure that health, social care and public health services address local health needs and are focused on reducing health inequalities (differences in health status in relation to birth rates, low birth weights and still birth between groups and areas). We also use information from this dataset for work on planning fertility and maternity services.

Who do we intend to share this information with?

This dataset will not be disclosed to anyone other than those stated above without permission, unless we have a legal reason to do so, for example disclosure is necessary to protect a person from suffering significant harm or necessary for crime prevention or detection purposes.

How do we keep this information secure?

Information is held in a secure database which is only accessible to named analysts within the Leeds Public Health Intelligence Team. The data is on a secure database server with user-based access which may only be accessed via the Council’s internal network which is protected by AES 256 encryption.

Data will be held be for births from 2001 onwards consistent with the data access agreement between NHS Digital, the Office for National Statistics and Leeds City Council.

What are your rights?

You have the right to request Leeds City Council to stop processing your personal data in relation to any council service. However, if this request is approved this may cause delays or prevent us delivering a service to you. Where possible we will seek to comply with your request but we may need to hold or process information in connection with one or more of the Council’s legal functions.

You have the right to opt-out of the Leeds City Council Public Health Intelligence Team receiving or holding your personal identifiable information. There are occasions where the Council and / or service providers appointed to act on its behalf will have a legal duty to share information, for example for safeguarding or criminal issues. The process for opting out will depend on the specific data is and what programme it relates to.

If you have any questions about our use of these data, wish to request a copy of the information we hold about you, or if you wish to discuss your rights in relation to opting-out from these processes, please contact the Public Health team by email at PHI.Requests@leeds.gov.uk or by post to:

If you have concerns about the use of your personal data, the Information Commissioners Office is an independent body set up to uphold information rights in the UK. They can be contacted through their website:www.ico.org.uk, through their helpline (0303 123 1113) and in writing at their head office:

Changes to this privacy notice

We keep our privacy notice under regular review. This privacy notice was last updated 16 January 2019.