Privacy Notice: Bedford Borough Council’s SEND & AP Change Programme

June 2025

 This notice explains how and why we use your personal information when you are involved in the Bedford Borough Council SEND & AP Change Programme. 

Who are we? 

  • We're Spark the Difference Limited ('we', 'our', 'us') and operate under the name Spark the Difference. 

  • We're registered with the UK data protection authority (the Information Commissioner's Office or ICO) under number ZA769139. 

  • We have been commissioned by Bedford Borough Council to deliver this project. 

 

Getting in touch 

For any questions, please contact us however you prefer: 

  • email Sam Meikle on sam@sparkthedifference.com; or 

  • Spark the Difference, Almond Studios Unit 213, The Biscuit Factory, Drummond Road, London, SE16 4DG 

We'll respond within a month in line with data protection laws, like the UK GDPR. 

  

What personal information do we collect ? 

For this project, we are likely to collect and process your: 

  • Name 

  • Email address 

  • Phone (optional) 

  • Locality of Bedford Borough (but not your residential address) 

  • Views and experiences of accessing local services 

  • Which services you, your family, or the person you care for have accessed, or attempted to access. 

If you visit our website, we may also collect automatic information about your visit in order to improve how we share information on our website.

How does Spark the Difference use your personal information? 

Most of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by you for one of the following reasons: 

  • To participate in an interview to share your views and/or experiences about local services 

  • To participate in a workshop to share your views and/or experiences about local services 

  • To receive project updates and/or the final report by email. 

We may use the information that you have given us in order to: 

  • Identify themes from people who access or use Bedford Borough’s SEND & AP services, so we can help improve how services are designed and delivered.

Who do we share your personal information with? 

We don’t and never will sell your personal data to third parties.  

We will not share your personal information with local commissioners.  

All themes for the purpose of improving future services are processed at a group level, meaning that no one individual can be identified.

  •  The exception to this is if there are safeguarding or clinical risks that we become aware of during our interactions. In this case, we will follow our Safeguarding Policy to keep everyone safe. 

 

Third parties 

We use third party suppliers to process data in order to provide our services and we may share personal information as part of this process.

Suppliers we use are: 

For more information, including how to opt out of third parties collecting your data, please refer to the links above. 

Our reason for using this information about you 

Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the lawful basis we rely on for processing this information is:  

(a) Your consent. You can withdraw your consent at any time. You can do this by contacting us on the details above. 

How we store your personal information  

Your information is securely stored according the national data security standards. 

We are proud to have publicly published an assessment against the National Data Guardian’s 10 data security standards. You can see this on NHS Digital’s website here. 

 We keep any information about you for the duration of the project. This is expected to end in March 2026.

We will then securely dispose your information according to our Data Retention and Disposal Policy. 

Your data protection rights 

Under data protection law, you have rights including: 

  • Your right of access - You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.  

  • Your right to rectification - You have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.  

  • Your right to erasure - You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.  

  • Your right to restriction of processing - You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.  

  • Your right to object to processing - You have the the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances. 

  • Your right to data portability - You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances. 

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. 

Please contact us on the details at the start of this privacy notice if you wish to make a request. 

 

How to make a complaint 

If you have a complaint about how we use your personal information, please contact us using the contact details above. 

You can also complain to the ICO if you are unhappy with how we have used your data. 

The ICO’s address: 

Information Commissioner’s Office 

Wycliffe House 

Water Lane 

Wilmslow 

Cheshire 

SK9 5AF 

 Helpline number: 0303 123 1113 

ICO website: https://www.ico.org.uk