Your personal information
Under the Data Protection Act 1998, the Pension Protection Fund Ombudsman is a data controller for any personal information that he holds about individuals. This means that he must comply with various duties; for instance, he must use personal information fairly, and keep it safely and securely.
By “personal information”, we mean information that is about identifiable living individuals. Referrals, complaints and appeals can sometimes include a considerable amount of information about individuals, such as names, ages, where individuals
used to work, their income and their roles. When we investigate or consider referrals, complaints and appeals we sometimes receive additional personal information
about individuals.
We use this information to help us reach decisions and we may need to share information with other individuals or organisations that are involved in dealing with a referral, complaint or appeal. This will usually mean we share information with other significantly adversely affected persons. As we have a duty to deal with personal information securely, we do not usually share personal information by e-mail or encourage others to do so (unless the information is encrypted).
Because such information may be sensitive, we ask the people we send it to to keep it confidentially.
By law, the Ombudsman also has the power to share information about referrals, complaints and appeals with a small number of other organisations, if he thinks it necessary in helping them carry out their own functions, but he will always consider this carefully before doing so.
We aim to carry out our work openly and transparently and for this reason, we usually publish the Ombudsman's decisions on this website. The published decisions sometimes give individuals' names (but not
addresses), and may include relevant information about them, in order to explain what decision the Ombudsman has reached and why.
In some cases, before publishing a decision, the Ombudsman may decide to edit it, so that individuals cannot be identified or so that particular information is not disclosed. For example, he might: remove names and/or other information that might enable individuals to be identified; he might also remove particularly sensitive material
such as financial information; or, in an exceptional case, publish the decision in summary form only, while making more information available to anyone who requests it.
If you are involved in a referral, complaint or appeal that is being investigated and you think that the Ombudsman should edit the decision before publishing it, you should let us know as soon as possible, giving your reasons. He will not always agree, but will always consider a request very carefully.
