About UKHSA

UKHSA is an executive agency of the government, sponsored by the Department Health and Social Care (DHSC). The DHSC is the data controller for the personal information we collect, store and use to fulfil our remit.

We are responsible for planning, preventing and responding to external health threats, and providing intellectual, scientific and operational leadership at national and local level, as well as internationally. UKHSA will ensure the nation can respond quickly and at greater scale to deal with pandemics and future threats.

We collect and use personal information to fulfil our remit from the government. UKHSA's responsibilities include providing a range of radiation protection services. These services can be accessed via the Radiation Protection Services website.

This privacy notice explains what personal information we collect, use and may share for the purposes of user research we are conducting to improve the Radiation Protection Services website. It explains what your rights are if we hold your personal information, and how you can find out more or raise a concern.

To improve our products and services, occasionally we may reach out you to ask for your voluntary participation in user research. If you choose to participate, we may collect additional personal data, to help us conduct analysis on the performance of our services.

The information we collect

If you choose to opt in, the types of personal information we may collect about you include:

• Name
• Photo and/ or voice recording
• Email address
• Job title/ organisational structure

This information is only collected for the purpose of the user research activity. Any analysis or findings that are shared within the department are always anonymised.

How we collect your information

This information comes from:

• Your responses to our voluntary surveys
• Your responses to our voluntary user research interviews

The purposes we use your information for

This information is used to help us:

• Understand how users interact with the current website, and our products and services
• Determine what users want changed or improved; and
• Learn how users access services
• The results of this work will help us improve our service offering in the future.

How we protect your information

The personal information used by Radiation Protection Sciences for this user research is protected in a number of ways.

It is stored on computer systems that have been tested to make sure they are secure and which are kept up-to-date to protect them from viruses and hacking.

We won't share your personal information with any other organisations for marketing, market research or commercial purposes, and we don't pass on your details to other websites.

Your information used by us can only be seen by staff who have been specifically trained to protect your privacy. Strong controls are in place to make sure all these staff can only see the minimum amount of personal information they need to do their job.

Whenever possible, we only use your information in a form that does not directly identify you.

No information that could identify individual people is ever published by UKHSA.

Where we store your information

We store your personal information on our secure servers in the UK. We use Mural to analyse anonymised research data we collect in the surveys, and this information may also be stored outside of Europe. You can view Mural's Privacy Notice here.

Who we share your information with

We will not share any personal information we have collected about you for this user research project with other organisations not referenced in this Privacy Notice.

How long we keep your information

Personal information collected for the user research is retained for 12 months, after which it is securely deleted. The information needs to be kept for this long to allow us to analyse your responses and help us improve our products and services.

Your rights over your information

Under data protection law, you have a number of rights over your personal information. You have the right to:

• ask for a copy of any information we hold about you
• ask for any information we hold about you that you think is inaccurate to be changed
• ask us to restrict our use of your information, for example, where you think the information we are using is inaccurate
• object to us using any information we hold about you
• delete any information we hold about youu
• ask us not to use your information to make automated decisions about you without the involvement of one of our staff
• You have the right to object to us contacting you for user research or feedback activities. If you do not wish to be contacted for these purposes, please let us know by emailing reops.team@ukhsa.gov.uk. This is a mailbox monitored by Brenda Litter who is not directly involved in the project, but will direct your query to the relevant person

You can exercise any of these rights by contacting UKHSA at:

You will be asked to provide proof of your identity so that we can be sure we only provide you with your information.

Our legal basis to use your information

The law on protecting personal information, known as the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA), allows UKHSA to use the personal information collected by Radiation Protection Services.

The sections of the UK GDPR and the DPA that apply where we use personal information for this research are:

• UK GDPR Article 6(1)(e) 'processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest'
• UK GDPR Article 9(2)(i) 'processing is necessary for reasons of public interest in the area of public health'
• Data Protection Act 2018 Schedule 1 Part 1 (3) 'public health'

How to find out more or raise a concern

If you would like to find out more about Radiation Protection Services, you can contact us at reops.team@ukhsa.gov.uk. This is a mailbox monitored by Brenda Litter who is not directly involved in the project, but will direct your query to the relevant person

If you have any concerns about how personal information is used and protected by UKHSA, you can contact the Department of Health and Social Care's Data Protection Officer at data_protection@dhsc.gov.uk or by writing to:

You also have the right to contact the Information Commissioner's Office if you have any concerns about how UKHSA uses and protects any personal information it holds about you. You can do so by calling the ICO's helpline on 0303 123 1113, visiting the ICO's website at ico.org.uk or by writing to:

About this privacy information

The personal information we collect and use may change so we may need to revise this notice. If we do, the publication date provided below will change.

Published OCT 2025

For more information, please also see UKHSA privacy notice - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).