This site is owned and operated by Taranaki Regional Council using software licensed from Social Pinpoint. For details on how we collect and protect your personal information, refer to our Privacy Policy below. For details of how Social Pinpoint may access personal information, please refer to Social Pinpoint’s Privacy Policy.

Taranaki Regional Council (referred to as “TRC”, “we”, “our” or “us”) is committed to protecting the privacy of your information.

This privacy policy tells you about our collection and use of your personal information through your use of the Have your say Taranaki website (haveyoursay.trc.govt.nz).

The collection and use of personal information by Taranaki Regional Council is regulated by the Privacy Act 2020. Under this Act, personal information may be collected only for a lawful purpose connected with a function or activity of the council and only if necessary for that purpose. Such information must, as a general rule, be collected directly from the individual concerned and that person must be told why the information is needed.

The Taranaki Regional Council will use personal information provided by website visitors only for the reasons it was given.

This Privacy Policy does not apply to third party websites or digital services which may be linked to content published by either Social Pinpoint or Taranaki Regional Council. We recommend you read the privacy statement of the relevant service when you access these third party sites.

Why do we request personal information?

Taranaki Regional Council collects your personal information for several reasons, which includes, but is not limited to:

• to enable us to respond to you should you request that
• to provide us with the demographic information to determine the extent to which the feedback collected is representative of the community
• to allow us to gather participation data (such as numbers interacting from specified areas) with specific topics to better inform our feedback to Council
• to understand the reach and representation achieved and address any gaps to ensure diverse representational engagement across Taranaki
• to ensure that any one participant or spammers and trolls are not unduly influencing the feedback results

What information is collected?

The type of personal information collected will vary and may include (but is not limited to):

• Your name
• Email address
• Username
• Profile picture
• Phone number
• Your IP address
• User-agent string
• Other unique ID numbers
• Social network account IDs
• Physical address, postcode, or other locational attributes
• Demographic information such as age, gender, etc.
• Information about your preferences
• Your recorded thoughts, ideas, opinions, etc. as expressed by you. This may include sensitive information if you provide political opinions.

How do we use your information?

Social Pinpoint and Taranaki Regional Council may access and use the information collected by the Operator (personal or otherwise) in order to:

• allow you to access our Software
• respond to your enquiries
• maintain our licensed Software
• detect and rectify fraud or other behaviour that violates any terms of use
• respond to service requests from the Operator
• comply with our contractual or legal obligations and resolve any disputes that we may have
• monitor sites to ensure adequate safety and security
• conduct de-identified research, analytics and business development
• improve our Software and services
• if otherwise required or authorised by law

Email notifications

If you subscribe to receive notifications about upcoming projects or other engagement activities, the email address you provided will be used by us to send you that information. You can unsubscribe from these notifications at any time.

Sharing of your personal information

Access to your personal information is confined to authorised users only, which includes employees of TRC on a need-to-know basis, our website administrators, and Social Pinpoint.

TRC respects the privacy of your information and will take all reasonable measures to prevent unauthorised access to, or unlawful disclosure of, your personal information.

Publicly available information

When you sign up to and use Have your say Taranaki, some of the information you provide will be publicly available.

Information that is available to the public is limited to your username and any comments you leave under that username in the forums or other feedback tools published to Have your say Taranaki. As above, you can use an anonymous user name if you do not want your full name attached to your comments.

Feedback (including overall results of polls and surveys, and in some instances, quotes from forums and surveys with the username referenced) may be published in publicly available reports at the end of the consultation period.

You may use Have your say Taranaki to make submissions to TRC pursuant to the Local Government Act 2002 (for example, submissions on annual plans or long term plans).By taking part in the public submission process, submitters agree to any personal information (including names and contact details) in their submission being made available to the public and published on our website, and for the information collected to be held in accordance with TRC’s general Privacy Policy available at trc.govt.nz.

Storage of personal information

Information collected through this website will be held by Social Pinpoint in accordance with its privacy policy. Social Pinpoint is an offshore service provider based on Australia so personal information collected will be stored in their server located in Sydney, Australia. The information will also be downloaded on TRC servers with privacy protections in place. We comply with the requirements of the Privacy Act in relation to the transfer of personal information offshore.

Access and correction

If you would like to access, update, correct, or delete the personal information that TRC is holding about you, you are welcome to make these requests by emailing TRC at haveyoursay@trc.govt.nz.

We will provide you with access to your personal information unless we are required or authorised to refuse such access by law.

You may also request a change or correction of personal information that we hold about you. When you are a registered user you will have the ability to correct your personal information at your discretion through the ‘edit profile’ function. You may also choose to contact us to request a change or correction of your personal information. We will take all necessary steps to accommodate your request unless we are required or authorised to refuse that request by law.

If you want to check personal information that we hold about you or have any other access or correction request, please contact us at haveyoursay@trc.govt.nz. Please quote your name and address and, if possible, provide brief details of what information you want a copy of (this helps us to more readily locate your information).

Changes to this Policy

We reserve the right to modify this policy from time to time, at our sole discretion. If we make a material change to the Privacy Policy we will notify you and the modified policy shall be effective once we notify you of the change. If we do not make any material amendments then we will post the modified policy on our website and it shall be effective once posted. We recommend that you regularly check our website to make sure you are aware of our most up-to-date policy.

Contact us

To contact us about our Privacy Policy, compliance with any applicable privacy laws, or to modify or delete your personal data, please email us at: haveyoursay@trc.govt.nz

We will review all messages received and respond to each message upon due consideration. We may require further information to respond to your message, or may refer you to the Social Pinpoint when appropriate.

The following Terms and Conditions govern the use of Have your say Taranaki (“the site”). The software platform is owned by Social Pinpoint Pty Ltd and operated by us, Taranaki Regional Council.

By accessing and using this site, you are choosing to accept and comply with the Terms presented throughout this agreement as well as the Privacy Policy. These Terms apply to all visitors and users of this site. Linked sites, affiliated services or third party content or software have their own Terms that you must comply with. If you disagree with any of the Terms presented in this agreement, you may discontinue using the site immediately.

If you are under 18 years old, please ensure that your parent or guardian understands and accepts these Terms and Conditions (including the Privacy Policy and Moderation Policy).

Accuracy of information

The Taranaki Regional Council has made every reasonable effort to provide complete and accurate information on this website, but accepts no responsibility or liability for the public's subsequent use or misuse of the information provided.

While every effort is made to keep this website up to date, please note that some documents and information may have been superseded and/or amended since they were first published.

What are the conditions with a user’s account?

While using the site, you must not violate any applicable laws and regulations. It is our duty to protect the confidentiality of content you provide on our site in accordance with our Privacy Policy. When you create an account with us, you must always provide us with accurate information. Failure to provide accurate information violates the Terms, which may result in immediate termination of your account on our service. You are responsible for protecting your own password you use for this site and for any activities done under that password. Unauthorised use of your password or account must be immediately reported to Taranaki Regional Council. In some cases, we or our agents may require access to your user accounts to respond to technical issues.

We are not responsible for the content on the site that has been provided by the users of the site. Any content posted by you is subject to the rules of our Moderation Policy. Your contribution to the site may be edited, removed or not published if we consider it inappropriate (refer to Moderation Policy). Contributors should also be aware that their posts may remain online indefinitely. Where practical, you may choose not to identify yourself, deal with us on an anonymous basis or use a pseudonym.

What do we require from our users?

You must understand and agree that, without limitation:

• all information, data, images and other materials are the sole responsibility of the person from whom the content originated;
• you are prohibited from advertising or offering to sell or buy any goods and services
• you cannot transmit Content that contains software viruses or programs designed to change or destroy the functionality of any computer software or hardware; or
• you cannot collect or store personal data about other users of the site
• you cannot impersonate any person or entity, including without limitation to a Taranaki Regional Council representative
• you cannot interrupt or interfere with the site or servers or networks connected to the site
• you cannot attempt to gain unauthorised access to the site or other use accounts

Can your account be suspended or terminated?

We may terminate or suspend access to your site and/or account immediately, without prior notice, including without limitation if you breach the Terms. We may immediately deactivate or delete your account and all the related files and information in your account. After your account has been terminated, the content you have posted may also remain indefinitely on the site.

If you want to terminate your own account, please send an email to haveyoursay@trc.govt.nz.

Governing Law

These Terms shall be governed in accordance with the laws of New Zealand, without regards to its conflict of law provisions.

Indemnification

Taranaki Regional Council, its subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, agents, licensors and other partners are not responsible for any loss, liability, claim, or demand, including legal fees, made by any third party due to or arising from a breach of this agreement and/or any breach of your representations and warranties set forth above.

What content do we own?

This website contains the copyrighted material, trademarks, patents, trade secrets and other proprietary information (“Intellectual Property”) of Taranaki Regional Council and its suppliers and licensors. Taranaki Regional Council owns and retain all proprietary rights in the intellectual property. All intellectual property in the content of this site including without limitation to text, software, source code, pages, documents and online graphics, photographs, sounds, audio, video and other interactive features are owned by or licensed to us.

Any original content that you submit or post on our site may be made available to the public and allows users to share your content (with the end user acknowledging your contribution) under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 New Zealand License.

Except for Intellectual Property which is in the public domain or for which you have been given written permission, you may not copy, alter, transmit, sell, distribute any of the Intellectual Property.

We are not responsible for your communications or dealings, including payment and delivery of goods or services, with a third party found via our website . Any loss or damage incurred from those communications or dealings are solely between the user and the third party.

Disclaimer and Warranties

Users must agree that you use of the site is at your own risk. We make no warranty that the site will meet your requirements or be uninterrupted or error-free. Any material that the user downloads through the site is done at their own risk and are responsible for any damages to their computer system or loss of data.

What happens if these Terms change?

We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to modify or replace these Terms at any time without notice. The most recent version of the Terms can be seen on this page. By continuing to access or use our site after those revisions become effective, you agree and will comply to the revised terms. If you do not agree to the revised terms, please discontinue using our site.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about these Terms, please contact us at haveyoursay@trc.govt.nz.