This page explains how the Department of Health uses any information you give to us, and the way we protect your privacy. Protecting the privacy and personal data of the visitors to our site is of the utmost importance to us.
The Data Protection Act
In accordance with the Data Protection Act, we have a legal duty to protect any information we collect from you. We will only use your information for the purpose as described and, apart from for these purposes, we will not pass on your details to any other government department or third party unless you have given us permission to do so. You have a right to access your personal data and rectify any inaccuracies.
If you provide feedback on our website we’ll only use it to develop and improve the site. We’ll keep the actual feedback for 6 months, after which it will be deleted but analysis of feedback may be kept.
Site usage and cookies
When we provide services, we want to make them easy, useful and reliable. Where services are delivered on the internet, this sometimes involves placing small amounts of information on your device, for example, computer or mobile phone. These include small files known as cookies. They cannot be used to identify you personally.
You can manage these small files yourself and learn more about them on GOV.UK’s cookie page (opens in new tab).
On this site, the cookies we use are:
- ‘__utma’ to make sure our service is reliable and fast and also to measure numbers and volumes of visitors
- ‘__utmb’, ‘__utmc’, and ‘__utmz’ to understand what visitors want to view and not to view so we can improve the service you receive and archive what is not required
Statement coverage
This privacy statement only covers the Healthy Start website at www.healthystart.nhs.uk. It does not cover links within this site to other websites.
Security
This site has security measures in place to protect the loss and alteration of information under our control. The ‘Contact us’ email form that you can use to contact the Healthy Start Issuing Unit is subject to Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS). HTTPS means that the information you enter into the email form is encrypted so that it is protected against online thieves. You can check this by looking at the url (web address) for the page at the top of your browser – you will see that it begins “https”.
Changes to the policy
If the privacy policy changes in any way, we’ll place an updated version on this page. Regularly reviewing the page ensures that you are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we’ll share information with other parties.
Glossary of terms
Cookies
These are files containing information about visitors to a website (for example, user name and preferences). This information is provided by the user during their first visit to a web server. The server records this information in a text file and stores this file on the visitor’s hard drive. When the visitor accesses the same website again, the server looks for the cookie and configures itself based on the information provided.
Log files
These are files created by a web or proxy server which contain all of the access information regarding the activity on that server.
Updated April 2020.