Devon County Council (DCC) is collecting and or processing your personal data as a Data Controller under Data Protection Legislation and our ICO registration number is Z6475582.

The Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) service is responsible for carrying out duties under the Children and Families Act 2014 in relation to all aspects of SEND. This includes early identification and assessment, statutory assessment processes, and the ongoing monitoring of children and young people who have education, health and care (EHC) plans. We work in a co-ordinated way with other children and young people’s services in Devon County Council and with partner organisations to ensure we deliver the best possible outcomes for children and young people with SEND in our area. In order to do this, it is necessary for the Council to process personal data relating to children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities and their parents.

This notice explains what information we collect, why we collect it and how we keep it secure. It also explains your rights and our legal obligation. Should you wish to find out more about Devon County Council’s data protection policies please contact our Data Protection Officer.

We will notify you of any changes to this privacy notice

This privacy notice was last updated 27/01/2026. If we use your personal data for any new purposes, updates will be made to the policy information and changes communicated, where necessary in accordance with current data protection legislation. Any queries relating to this privacy notice please contact the Data Protection Officer.

What information are we processing?

We may collect, store or otherwise process information about you which may include:

Personal information (such as name, address, contact details, date of birth, parent or carer names and contact details, gender, unique identification number, for example NHS Number)
Details of special educational needs or disabilities
Ethnicity
Information about physical or mental health
Information about family circumstances
Information about social care involvement with children and their families that might be relevant to their education and health.
Information collated as part of an education, health and care plan (EHCP)

How are we processing your personal data

We may use your personal data in the following ways, to help us deliver the purposes outlined within this Privacy Notice:

We will collect personal data from you and your family to support us inform our service offer.
We will store personal data about you and your family
Analyse personal data for quality assurance purposes
We may use IT software including Artificial Intelligence solutions such as Power AI and Microsoft Copilot, to help us to summarise documents containing personal data or to perform quality assurance checks.
We will delete personal data that we no longer need.
We may share personal data to ensure that we can deliver the services that we need to.

Purpose of collecting your personal data

We use your personal information to:

Identify and clarify your child’s SEND needs
Identify the support your child needs to help them to achieve their outcomes
Make decisions about whether to conduct a statutory needs assessment or issue an education, health and care (EHC) plan
Make decisions about the content of an education, health and care plan including outcomes, provision and placement
Support the ongoing monitoring of the provision specified in an education, health and care plan where one is issued
Inform education, health and care plan annual review and monitor your child’s progress
Support disagreement resolution or mediation processes and processes relating to appeals to the Special Educational Need and Disability Tribunal (SENDT)
Enable co-ordinated partnership working with other teams and organisations who can support your child
Evaluate and quality assure the services we provide and analyse provision and outcomes to support future service improvement and commissioning.

The legal basis for us collecting your personal data

Legislation to which our legal obligations and public tasks are related include:

Data Sharing Code of Practice (Information Commissioner’s Office 2012)
Children and Families Act 2014 (Part 3)
Children’s Act 2004 (Part 2, Section 10)
Health and Social Care Act 2014 (Part 1, Section 3)
Care Act 2014 (Part 1, Section 7)
SEND Code of Practice (2014)

We rely on the following provisions of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) as the lawful bases for processing your personal data:

Article 6 1(c) – Legal obligation
Devon County Council has a legal obligation to provide a number of functions and services and it is necessary to process your personal data in order to comply with these obligations.

Article 6 1(e) – Public task
Devon County Council carries out a number of tasks in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in us and it is necessary to process your personal data in order to undertake such tasks.

We rely on the following provision of the UK GDPR as the lawful basis for processing your special category data:

Article 9 2(g) – substantial public interest
In order to deliver some services it may be necessary to process data which is classed as a special category. This is information about you which, due to its nature, is afforded additional protections under data protection law. This information may include details regarding health and disability.

Recipients or categories of recipients that we may share your personal data with

In order to meet the needs of children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, Devon County Council works with a number of internal teams and external partners. In order to ensure that needs can be met, and positive outcomes achieved, it is sometimes necessary to share your personal data with our partners. Organisations we may share data with include:

Other council teams involved in improving outcomes for children and young people
Commissioned providers delivering services on our behalf
Schools, colleges and early years providers as well as wider education or training providers
Partner organisations including NHS organisations, Devon Integrated Care Board, district councils, and the police
Other local authorities and social care or health providers outside of the Local Authority area
Department of Education
Providers of independent advice, guidance, mediation and advocacy
When working to identify the setting to be named in a child or young person’s Education, Health and Care Plan, we will share information that we have collected as part of a statutory needs assessment with providers who we feel might meet the identified needs. Or for who parents or carers have expressed a preference for.
With commissioned service providers such as Enhance EHC Ltd, who we contract with to support with the production of ECHP plans.
Legal agents such as Weightmans Solicitors, who we contract with to represent the Council in SEND Tribunals.

Safeguarding – in cases where you or another member of the public may be at risk, your personal information will be shared as necessary in order to protect individuals from harm.

Other statutory obligations – the council will share your personal information where we are legally obliged to do so – for example, for the prevention or detection of crime or fraud.

International transfers

Devon County Council does not intend to transfer personal data to any countries outside of the scope of UK data protection laws.

How long will we hold your personal data?

Personal data will be retained for seven years after a SEND case closure or until the 25^th birthday of the child who is the subject of an education, health and care plan.

No automated decisions are taken using personal data provided for the purposes of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) service delivery.

Your data protection rights

Under Data Protection Legislation, you have the right to obtain a copy of their personal records held by us, this is called a Subject Access Request (SAR).

Details of how to make a request can be found here

Further details on your rights under data protection legislation and how to exercise them.

Complaints

If you have any comments, queries or complaints about this privacy notice or the processing of your personal data please contact our Data Protection Officer.

Alternatively, if you are not happy with the way that DCC is handling your personal data, you are entitled to appeal to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO). The Information Commissioners Office enforces and oversees the Data Protection Regulations. Further details of how to lodge a complaint with the ICO are available from their website at https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/data-protection-complaints/.

Automated decisions

Devon County Council does not intend to use your personal data to make automated decisions about you. However, we may Artificial Intelligence tools such as PowerAI and Microsoft Copilot to help with summarise documents, support with the collation of documentation and to help support our quality assurance work.

The Special Educational Needs and Disability Service are also embarking on a trial of the MagicNotes AI solution. This will be used to support in the following areas:

Drafting education, health and care needs assessments (EHCNAs) and EHC Plans
Drafting Psychological Advice
Supporting Joint Assessment Meetings through transcriptions and summaries of meetings
Producing Meeting Minutes and Summaries

Please note that any outputs generated from Artificial Intelligence solutions will always be the subject of human scrutiny and will not be used to make automated decisions about someone.