Privacy statement

Your privacy is important to us at Central Districts Water. This privacy statement covers our collection of your personal information through our website and social media channels, and how we may use and disclose it. It has been prepared in accordance with our obligations and your rights, as set out in the Privacy Act 2020.

We may amend this statement from time to time, for example in response to developments in our services or changes to the Privacy Act 2020.

The kinds of personal information we collect from you

The personal information we collect may include your name, email address, and any other contact details you provide to us. It may also include information about your use of our services or facilities (or those of the councils that established us) and any other personal information provided by you through your communications with us.

When we collect your personal information

We may collect your personal information when you, or someone acting on your behalf, provide it to us directly. Examples include when you:

contact us in person, by letter, phone, text, email, instant messages, or other means of electronic communication
complete and submit electronic forms
subscribe for updates from us
follow or post comments in response to our social media, such as Facebook or LinkedIn.

We may collect personal information about you that is provided to us by the councils that established us. This information is collected so that we can perform our functions and provide our services or facilities, in accordance with the Local Government (Water Services) Act 2025.

We may monitor and record phone calls made to us or by us for quality control or staff training purposes. If a call is to be monitored and recorded, you will be informed at the time of the call.

We also automatically collect personal information when you visit our website. This is described in more detail under the ‘Website analytics and cookies’ heading below.

How we use your personal information

The personal information we collect from you, or someone acting on your behalf, may be used for any of the following purposes:

to provide you with information you have requested
to provide you with services or facilities
to respond to your requests, enquiries, feedback, or for customer service related activities
to provide you with information about our events, news, services, or facilities (or those of the councils that established us) that we consider may be of interest to you
to carry out activities connected with the running of our business or operations, such as personnel training, or testing, maintenance and improvement of our computer, website and other systems
to confirm your identity (this is to avoid inappropriate release or use of your personal information)
for general administrative and business purposes
to comply with relevant laws and regulations.

How we share your personal information

We may share your personal information with:

any person we engage to provide information, products or services to you on our behalf, where your personal information is necessary for that purpose
the councils that established us, where they need your personal information to provide information, products or services, or we are required to provide it to them by law (for example, charging information sufficient to enable calculation of any rates rebate entitlements)
any person you authorise us to provide your personal information to
any person, if we are required to do so under laws or regulations, or in the course of legal proceedings or other investigations.

We may also share aggregated personal information about you and other individuals, if it is in a form that does not identify you.

Website analytics and cookies

We may collect information about your visit to help us manage and improve this website. This includes:

your IP address
the search terms you used
the pages you accessed on our website and the links you clicked on
the date and time you visited the website
the device you used to visit the website (eg iOS or Android phone, tablet or desktop computer)
your general location (eg city or township)
the referring website (if any) through which you clicked through to this website
your operating system (eg Windows 10, Mac Mojave)
the type of web browser you use (eg Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari)
other system settings like your screen resolution and the language setting of your browser.

The information referred to above will be viewable by website administrators and certain other Central Districts Water staff. It may also be shared with the councils that established us.

We use technologies, such as cookies, to customise content and advertising, to provide social media features and to analyse traffic to our website. We also share information about your use of our website with our social media, advertising and analytics providers. These include:

Google Tag Manager to manage and deploy marketing and analytics tags on our website. It allows us to track user behaviour, such as pages visited and links clicked. See the Google privacy policy and principles and Google Tag Manager terms of service.
Google Analytics to measure which pages on our site attract the most interest and to inform our overall communications and engagement approach. You can access a Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on to prevent your data from being used by Google Analytics.
Meta Pixel (formerly Facebook Pixel) to track the activity of users redirected to our website from Facebook or Instagram, to measure and assess website effectiveness, track conversion actions, and help us understand the interests and preferences of people visiting our website. The collected data is anonymous to us, but is stored and processed by Meta. Meta may link this information to your Facebook account and use it for its own advertising purposes, in accordance with the Meta Privacy Policy.

You can opt out of some interest-based data collection by using tools like the Digital Advertising Alliance's WebChoices browser extension.

How we keep your personal information safe

We take reasonable steps to make sure the personal information we collect from you is:

protected against loss, damage, misuse and unauthorised access
accurate, up to date, complete, relevant, and not misleading.

Our website is cloud-based and designed with a robust, multi-layered approach to cybersecurity. Data is encrypted at rest and in transit, with identity and access management controls in place. Continuous monitoring, regular vulnerability scanning and penetration testing are carried out and incident response procedures are administered by trained provider staff. We use third party providers to store and process our website data. We store most of the personal information we collect and generate electronically on Amazon Web Services cloud servers located in Australia.

How long we keep your personal information

We will retain your personal information in compliance with the requirements of the Public Records Act 2005.

This generally involves retaining your personal information for as long as administratively necessary. However, ‘protected records’ may only be disposed of with the prior approval of the Chief Archivist. It is possible that your personal information may form part of a protected record, for example where you provide us with information about the performance of water services assets that we are responsible for.

What happens if you don’t provide us with personal information we request

If you do not provide us with all of the personal information about you that we request from you, we may not be able to adequately respond to your communications to us, process any applications you have submitted, provide the services or facilities you have requested, process payments, or otherwise deal with any requests or enquiries you have submitted.

Your rights: asking for and correcting your personal information

You have the right to request a copy of the personal information we hold about you (whether we have collected from you directly or from a third party). You also have the right to ask us to correct your information if you think it is wrong.

To request confirmation of, access to, or correction of your personal information, you can email us at info@centraldistrictswater.co.nz.

Once we have verified your identity, we will provide you with confirmation and access, unless one of the grounds for refusal set out in the Privacy Act 2020 applies. If we agree that your personal information is to be corrected, we will do so and we will also provide you with an amended record, if requested.

Your rights of access to and correction of any personal information we hold about you are subject to the procedures set out in the Privacy Act 2020.

Who to contact

If you have any questions or concerns about our privacy practices or our collection, use and sharing of personal information, you can contact us at info@centraldistrictswater.co.nz.