Childcare checker privacy notice

Checking eligibility for a free childcare place for a two year old and the Early Years Pupil Premium for three and four year olds

Darlington Borough Council ‘links in’ to the Department for Education’s checking system for two year olds and Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP) for 3 and 4 year olds, this enables local parents to check online on the Darlington Borough Council web pages to see if there child is eligible for a free childcare place for a two year old or whether their childcare provider or school is eligible for the EYPP on behalf of their child. 

Before the check can be carried out the parent/carer must complete a form requesting some personal details including the parent/carer’s name, their date of birth and their National Insurance Number or their National Asylum Support Service Number – the online check cannot be carried out without this information. The form also asks for the parent/carer’s contact details so that the system can issue a response to the eligibility check and the name and date of birth of the child for whom the check is being  carried out and where applicable, the name of the childcare provider currently being attended by this child.  This enables the local authority to follow up on cases, ensuring that an eligible child already attending childcare is accessing their entitlement free of charge or that a parent/carer with an eligible child who is not already attending a setting is provided with support, where necessary, to find an appropriate childcare place.

Registered childcare providers or schools can use this system to check a child’s eligibility on behalf of a parent/carer but they must receive the prior consent of the parent/carer to do this and they must ensure that the parent/carer is aware of the outcome of the eligibility check.  Before the check is carried out we also require the name and contact details of the person carrying out the check on behalf of the parent/carer, to ensure that eligibility checks are bona fide.  We may also collect anonymous information, such as your computer’s IP address to enable us to identify and report any suspicious eligibility checks. An Internet Protocol (IP) address is the numeric address of a computer and is determined by your internet service provider. It is different to your house address and although we can determine a rough geographic location from it, we cannot use it to identify you personally.  We use the IP address to identify individual computers.   In the event of serious criminal misuse of the internet, your internet service provider and the police may be able to use your IP address to identify you.

Darlington Borough Council may use the data captured on this form to ensure the accuracy of records across the Local Authority and to check against fraud. The data collected from the online form is stored by Darlington’s People and Families’ Information Support Service in a restricted, internal email folder. As well as passing this data on to registered childcare providers and schools, they may also share this data with staff from other parts of the Council, for example, Children’s Centre staff,  to enable them to support parents to access childcare provision whilst meeting the legal requirements of the Data Protection Act . To keep this information safe, we have policies and procedures in place.

Further information regarding Darlington Borough Council’s Data Protection Policy.

Darlington Borough Council’s nominated representative for the purposes of the Data Protection Act and the named Data Protection Officer is the Head of Corporate Assurance.                                                                    

If you have any further questions about data protection, you can talk with the Complaints and Information Governance Team on telephone number 01325 405449.