Accounts

Council and elections

Records of councillors' salaries, allowances, expenses and training

What we publish

For each councillor, we publish:

  • their name
  • their main role (like committee convener or opposition leader)
  • salary
  • car and van travel (we show what the councillor claimed and what the council paid directly)
  • other travel (split the same way – claimed by the councillor or paid directly by the council)
  • costs for meals and places to stay
  • training and conference costs
  • phone and IT costs (excluding equipment owned by the council)
  • any other allowances (for example, civic duties or staying with friends during travel)
  • total expenses
  • total salary and expenses.

We clearly label where a cost was:

  • reimbursed (money paid back to the councillor)
  • paid directly by the council.

When we publish

We publish this information every year by 1 June, covering the previous financial year (April to March).

See previous records of:

Ownership
Renfrewshire Council
Search type
Publication
Primary topic
Publication type
What information we publish

We publish information every year about what we pay each councillor and what expenses they’ve claimed. This includes money spent on things like travel and training.

We do this to make sure the information is open and easy for you to find. It also meets legal requirements set by the Scottish Government.

Archived
No
Show in-page menu?
On
Contacts
Part of

Privacy policy

What personal information is

Personal information is anything that identifies and relates to you.

It can include information that can be used with other information to identify you. 

For example, this could be your:

  • name
  • address
  • contact details
  • bank details
  • personal and family history
  • identification numbers
  • online identifiers.

Special category information

Some personal information is more sensitive and needs more protection.

This is often very personal to you such as information about your:

  • racial or ethnic background
  • genetic or biometric data
  • health
  • political opinions
  • religious or philosophical beliefs
  • sex life
  • sexual orientation
  • trade union membership.

We get most of the personal information we use from you and from what we learn about you through your interactions with us. 

We may also get some information about you from:

  • the technology you use to access our services
  • information you make public on social media
  • family members
  • your legal representative
  • referees
  • employers
  • information from publicly available sources
  • health and education providers
  • commissioned partners
  • regulatory bodies
  • police and other local authorities.

Why we need your personal information

We may need to use your personal information to:

  • deliver services and support to you
  • manage those services we provide to you
  • train and manage the employment of our workers
  • help investigate any worries or complaints you have about our services
  • keep track of spending on services
  • check the quality of services
  • help with research and planning of current and new services
  • protect public funds and prevent and detect crime and fraud.

There are circumstances when you are required by law or contract to provide personal information.

How we look after your information

When we ask you for personal information, we will:

  • make sure you know why we need it
  • ask only for what we need
  • protect your personal information and make sure nobody has access to it who shouldn't
  • take proportionate precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or destruction of your personal information
  • let you know if we share it with any other organisations to give you better public services
  • make sure we don't keep it longer than necessary, and
  • not make your personal information available for commercial use without your permission.

In return, we ask you to:

  • give us accurate information, and
  • tell us as soon as possible if there are any changes, such as a new address.

This helps us to keep your information reliable and up to date.

Consent

We will not ask for consent in cases where we need to process your information to carry out our public functions. 

If we have asked for your consent to process your information, you have the right to withdraw this, in whole or in part, at any time. We will explain any consequences of this to you, including any impact on the service we are delivering.

Who we share your personal information with

Sometimes we have a legal duty to provide personal information to other organisations.

For example, we share certain data with other public bodies such as Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and will do so where the law requires this. 

We also generally comply with requests for specific information from other regulatory and law enforcement bodies where this is necessary and proportionate.

Information is also used by the council to improve the services we deliver to you. 

Profiling and automatic decision making

The council does not use profiling or automated decision-making processes. Some processes are semi-automated such as anti-fraud data matching, but a human decision maker will always be involved before any decision is reached in relation to you.

Transfer of personal information outside the UK or European Economic Area

We will not transfer personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA) unless this cannot be avoided.

We’ll only transfer data outside the UK and the EEA when we are satisfied that the party which will handle the data and the country it is processing it in will provide adequate safeguards for personal privacy. 

On the occasions when we do transfer your information outside the UK or the European Economic Area, we'll inform you. 

How long we keep your personal information

We'll only keep your information as long as we need to.

Full details of how long the council usually retains your information can be found in the council's Retention and Disposal Schedule.

However, there may be circumstances where we may need to keep your information for longer. Once we no longer need to keep your information, it will be securely destroyed.

Your rights in relation to your personal information

You have a number of rights in relation to the personal information we collect and use about you.

Further information about these rights can be found on the Information Commissioner's individual rights page.

You have the following rights:

  • the right to be informed about how your information will be used.
  • the right of access to your personal information.
  • the right to rectification, which is the right to require the council to correct any mistakes.
  • the right to request the erasure of any personal information held by the council where the council no longer has legal reason to hold the information.
  • the right to request that your information is only processed in certain ways.
  • the right to data portability.

The right to object to the council processing your personal information.

These are not absolute rights are there may be circumstances where the council is legally obliged to process your information in a particular way.

For example, your details will be accessed by the council staff who need this to provide you with a service and if the service is provided by an external agency, that agency. We are also legally obliged to protect public funds, so details will be checked internally for fraud prevention and verification purposes and may be shared with other public bodies for the same purpose.

Right to be informed

Our Data Protection Officer, Allison Black, monitors Renfrewshire Council's compliance with the law and can deal with any concerns you have about how we handle personal data.

You have the right to ask more details on:

  • what information we hold about you and how to ask us to correct any mistakes
  • agreements we have with other organisations for sharing information
  • circumstances where we can pass on your information without telling you, for example, to prevent and detect crime or produce anonymised statistics
  • our instructions to staff on how to collect, use and delete your personal information and
  • how we check information we hold is accurate and up to date.

You can exercise any of these rights by contacting us:

Right to complain

When we ask you for information, we will abide by all relevant legislation, including the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

However, if you are unhappy with the way we process your personal data you have the right to complain. 

Any complaints regarding your data should be addressed to the Data Protection Officer, Allison Black on dataprotection@renfrewshire.gov.uk.

If the matter is not resolved, you can contact the Information Commissioner's Office, who can also provide independent data protection advice. The address and contact details for the Information Commissioner's Officer are:

Ownership
Renfrewshire Council
Search type
Publication
Primary topic
Publication type
What the privacy policy is

This privacy policy explains how Renfrewshire Council (referred to in this policy as ‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘the council’) uses information about you and how we look after it. We need to process personal information about you so that we can provide better services for you. 

Archived
No
Show in-page menu?
On
Contacts
Part of

Cookie policy

What cookies are

Renfrewshire.gov.uk uses cookies. 

Cookies are files saved on your phone, tablet or computer when you visit a website.

They perform important functions such as remembering preferences and help us to measure the performance of the website so that we can continue to improve it. 

Our cookies are not used to identify you personally. They’re just here to make the site work better for you. You can manage and/or delete these files as you wish. 

We will not use cookies on this website that collect information about what other websites you visit (often referred to as privacy intrusive cookies). 

What types of cookies we use

This website uses the following cookie

Strictly necessary cookies

These are required cookies that this website cannot function without.

Cookie consent

  • This cookie is set to remember the user's preferences about cookies
  • Expiry for CookieControl : 3 months.

Session cookies for Drupal Content Management System users

  • These cookie is only set for users that log into the Drupal Content Management system that allows us to manage this website
  • Expiry for SSESS*: 3 months
  • Expiry for Drupal.visitor.autologout_login: 1 year.

Spam protection

  • This cookie is used for Cloudflare spam protection
  • Expiry for cf_clearance: 14 days.

Dismissing notifications

  • This cookie is used to keep track of which notifications a visitor has dismissed
  • Expiry for hide-notification-token: 30 days.

Analytical cookies

We use Analytics cookies to help us understand how visitors interact with our website by collecting and reporting information anonymously. We use statistics cookies to analyse anonymised usage patterns.

Google analytics

We use Google Analytics Cookies to compile visitor statistics such as how many people have visited our website, what type of technology they are using (e.g. Mac or Windows which helps to identify when our site isn't working as it should for specific technologies), how long they spend on the site, what page they look at etc. This helps us to continuously improve our website. These cookies also tell us, on an anonymous basis, how people reached this site (e.g. from a search engine) and whether they have been here before.

List of cookies: _ga, _gid

You can opt-out of having your anonymised browsing history within our website recorded by analytics cookies. You can learn more about their privacy policy and how to opt-out of their analytics cookies by clicking on following links:

How to manage cookies 

You can prevent the downloading of cookies on your device, block their use or receive notification that cookies are being downloaded by changing the settings on your web browser. However, please be aware that blocking or restricting the use of cookies may prevent you from benefiting from some of our website’s features.  

You can manage your analytical and marketing cookie settings for Renfrewshire.gov.uk directly on this website.

Update Cookie Settings

You can also manage cookies on popular browsers: 

Further guidance on the use of personal information, and on cookies and similar technologies, can be found at the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) and allaboutcookies.org.

Ownership
Renfrewshire Council
Search type
Publication
Primary topic
Publication type
What the cookie policy is

This cookie policy explains how Renfrewshire Council (referred to in this policy as ‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘the Council’) collects and stores information about how you use the Renfrewshire.gov.uk website.

Archived
No
Show in-page menu?
On
Contacts
Part of
Subscribe to Council and elections