Privacy Notice: Small Woodlands Loan Scheme

This privacy notice will tell you:

• which personal information we will collect and use
• why we need this personal information and what we will use it for
• how we will get this information
• how long we will store it for
• whether there are other recipients of your personal information
• whether we intend to transfer it to another country

We are the controller for any personal information you give to us.

Scottish Forestry
Silvan House
231 Corstorphine Road
Edinburgh
EH12 7AT

Scottish.Forestry@forestry.gov.scot
0131 370 5250

Please mark any correspondence with ‘Privacy Notice – Small Woodlands Loan Scheme’.

In the course of providing loans under the Small Woodlands Loan Scheme (SWLS), including the assessment of Forestry Grant Scheme (FGS) applications, we collect personal information about you including (but not limited to):

• your Contact Details, and those of anyone working on behalf of the business
• details about your business, including its Name(s) and address(es)
• telephone number(s), and email address(s)
• details relating to and/or contained in your Forestry Grant Scheme (FGS) application
• bank/building society details, including customer name(s), supplier name(s), account number(s) and sort code(s)
• any information required for and/or contained within your Small Woodlands Loan Agreement

Small Woodlands Loan Scheme (SWLS)

We also collect information when you communicate with us or visit our website, whereby information is collected in accordance with our Cookie Policy.

Cookies

The lawful basis we rely on to process personal data for the above purposes is article 6 (1) of the UK GDPR:

(a) – you have given us your consent

(b) - through the need to comply with contractual obligations

(e) – to enable SF to carry out the public task of managing and administrating the Small Woodlands Loan Scheme

If you do not provide us with the personal information mentioned we will be unable to process your application for a loan or make any loan payments.

We need this information in order to administer the SWLS, including but not limited to:

• contacting the business owner/representatives or agents working on their behalf about any aspect of your application(s)
• making a decision on whether to provide loan funding against the FGS Application;
• making payments and/or reclamations of loan funds;
• notifying you about any changes or amendments to our services;
• use in case of legal disputes in relation to the repayment of loan funds
• allow us to carry out any statutory or regulatory duties in relation to the SWLS

We will get your personal information from various sources, including:

• information provided by the person applying for grant and/or loan or someone legally entitled to apply on their behalf
• from any completed pro-forma associated with the process of applying to the FGS or SWLS
• from requests made by Scottish Forestry to the Agriculture & Rural Economy Directorate (ARE) and/or the Rural Payments and Inspections Directorate (RPID)

The information we get will be collected at the point of application and at the point of approval, where applicable.

We may share your personal information, such as your name and address, with other public and regulatory bodies, for example ARE and RPID. We have a data sharing agreement in place with ARE and RPID.

This data sharing allows us to comply with statutes or regulation, or because it is required to manage or administer the SWLS.

Your personal information in signed loan agreements will be stored as hard copies. These will be kept in secure file storage at our local offices in filing cabinets with access limited to office staff as necessary only. The hard copies of loan agreements will be kept until the loan conditions have been met and the agreement has been discharged.

Your other personal information stored electronically will be stored on secure networks accessible only through the use of an encrypted laptop. Case management systems may be used and will be password protected and sensitive information will be stored in areas with restricted user access.

Personal Information stored on our case management system ‘Casebook’ will be double encrypted and excluded from search/query results on the system.

For information sharing we will use SharePoint, using password protection and two-factor authentication, or Objective Connect accessible only by invitation and through encrypted laptops and additional password checks.

Your personal information will be kept for a minimum period. Bank details will only be retained until payment has been made and confirmation of this payment is assured. Details will be disposed of within two days of payment confirmation. 

Digitally held data will be disposed of through the permanent deletion of the data either within our case management system or, where applicable, any document(s).

Hard [paper] copies will be disposed of securely.

We partner with the Scottish Government’s Rural Payments and Services in administering the SWLS, and provide a link to that organisation’s website. 

Scottish Forestry are not responsible for the content or information contained on any third-party websites.

This privacy notice was first published April 2021. We will keep this privacy notice under regular review to make sure it is up to date and accurate.

You can email the Data Protection Officer to exercise any of the following rights.

Your rights in relation to your personal information are:

• you have a right to request access to, and copies of, the personal information that we hold about you by making a "subject access request"
• if you believe that any of the personal information that we hold about you is inaccurate or incomplete, you have a right to request that we correct or complete your personal information
• you have a right to object to and/or request that we restrict the processing of your personal information for specific purposes
• where you have given consent to the processing of your personal information, you have the right to withdraw that consent

As your personal information relates to a loan agreement you do not have the right to withdraw consent to us using your data once a loan has been issued, nor can you restrict the use of this data if such restrictions would affect our ability to administer and manage the loan scheme.

Any requests received by us will be considered under applicable data protection legislation.