© Crown Copyright 2011

You may use and re-use the information featured on this website (not including logos) free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government Licence.

We encourage users to establish hypertext links to this website.

Any enquiries regarding the use and re-use of this information resource should be sent to

• e-mail: psi@nationalarchives.gsi.gov.uk

Statement of Intent

From time to time, you will be asked to submit personal information about yourself (eg name and email address etc) in order to receive or use services on our website.

By entering your details in the fields requested, you enable the Department to provide you with the services you select. Whenever you provide such personal information, we will treat that information in accordance with this policy.

Our services are designed to give you the information that you want to receive. The Department will act in accordance with current legislation and aim to meet current Internet best practice.

Information on visitors

During the course of any visit to this site, the pages you see, along with something called a cookie, are downloaded to your computer (see point 3 for more on this).

Most, if not all, websites do this, because cookies allow the website publisher to do useful things like find out whether the computer (and probably its user) has visited the site before. This is done on a repeat visit by checking to see, and finding, the cookie left there on the last visit.

Any information that is supplied by cookies can help us better understand your needs in order to provide you with a better service and it assists us to analyse the profile of our visitors. For example: if on a previous visit you went to, say, the Development Plans and Policy pages, then we might find this out from your cookie and highlight Development Plans and Policy information on a subsequent visit.

Use of Cookies

When you enter this site your computer will be automatically issued with a cookie, in order to collect non-personal user information required for system administration of the website.

Cookies are pieces of data created when you visit a site, and contain a unique, anonymous number. They are stored in a text file in the cookie directory of your hard drive, and do not expire at the end of your session. Cookies do not contain any personal information about you and cannot be used to identify an individual user.

This site uses a cookie that stores a random number on your computer to help us count the number of times users return to our site. The information that is supplied by cookies can help us better understand your needs in order to provide you with a better service and assist us to analyse the profile of our visitors.

You can set your browser not to accept cookies. If you do not know how to do this, you should visit the website of your browser manufacturer.

Submitting personal information

When you supply any personal information we have legal obligations towards you in the way we process and handle that data. We must collect the information fairly (see the notices on particular web pages that let you know why we are requesting the information); we must let you know how we will use it; and we must tell you in advance if we decide to pass the information on to anyone else.

We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as you use the service you have requested, and remove it in the event that the purpose has been met, or, in the case of a personalised service, when you no longer wish to continue your registration as a personalised user. Where personal information is held for people who are not registered users of the site, that information will be held only as long as necessary to ensure that the service is run smoothly. We will ensure that all personal information supplied is held securely, in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998.

Access to your personal information

You have the right to request a copy of the personal information the Department holds about you and to have any inaccuracies corrected. Please address requests to the Department using the contact address available on our Website.