Privacy Policy

This site is owned and operated by Taranaki Regional Council, trading as Te Pahi. Taranaki Regional Council (referred to as “Te Pahi”, “Te Pahi Taranaki”, “Taranaki Regional Council”, “TRC”, “we”, “our” or “us”) is committed to protecting the privacy of your information. This Privacy Policy helps you understand how we collect, use and protect your personal information when you visit our website, contact us or use our services. We are subject to the Privacy Act 2020 and the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987. 

This privacy policy does not apply to Have your say Taranaki, our public engagement and consultation website. Please see our Have your say Taranaki Privacy Policyopen_in_new. This privacy policy does not apply to our main council website, trc.govt.nz. Please see the TRC Privacy Policy hereopen_in_new. This privacy policy does not apply to Bee Cards. Personal information collected when you use Bee Cards managed in accordance with the Bee Privacy Statementopen_in_new. By accessing our website and/or using our services, you agree to this Privacy Policy. 

What personal information does Taranaki Regional Council collect? 

We collect information about you that you have provided to us (through completing forms, contacting us or using our services), or that we may have obtained from another source (such as our suppliers, transport operators, regulatory agencies, or from other organisations). This information may include your name, date of birth, address, email address, telephone numbers, information on how you use our services (such as your transaction history, how much you spend, and browsing activity when visiting one of our websites), and any other information collected in relation to your use of our services. 

When you visit our website, we may make a record of your visit and log information for statistical purposes. This information about your use is anonymised and aggregated, only analysed on a statistical basis. This information may include: 

• Your IP address 
• The date and time of your visit to the site 
• Information about the resources your browser loads, such as stylesheets and images 
• Behavioural information on how you move your mouse and interact with the page 
• The date, time and language preferences set on your device 
• Cookies stored on your device for this domain 
• The pages you accessed on this website and the documents you downloaded 
• The type of browser and device you are using. 
• If permission is granted to access location information on user location. 
• Demographic information such as age, gender, etc. 
• Information about your preferences 

If you use our website to complete a form, such as a contact form, we will only collect the information you provide as part of that process. 

While using our website, you may grant permission for us to access your device’s location services. If you grant permission, we may collect information on your location. 

How does Taranaki Regional Council use your information? 

The information we collect may be used for a number of reasons related to providing our services and operating our website. These purposes include, but are not limited to: 

• To manage enquiries, feedback, complaints and other customer service activities 
• To enable us to respond to you should you contact us 
• To provide you with services 
• To carry out marketing, website and service analysis 
• To enable us to send you information via email should you sign up to our mailing list 
• carrying out any activity in connection with a legal, governmental or regulatory requirement on us or in connection with legal proceedings, crime or fraud prevention, detection or prosecution; 
• For general business purposes 
• To allow us to show you your location on a map, show Journey Planner, Live Departures and Live Tracking information related to your location 

Camera usage and recordings 

All Te Pahi buses have cameras operating. 

Website cookies 

When we provide services, we want to make them easy, useful and reliable. Where services are delivered on the internet, this sometimes involves placing small amounts of information on your device (for example, your computer or mobile phone). These include small files known as cookies.  They cannot be used to identify you personally. These pieces of information are used to improve services for you. There are two types of cookie you may encounter when using this site: 

• First-party cookies: these are our own cookies, controlled by us and used to provide information about usage of our site. 
• Third party cookies: these are cookies found in other companies’ internet tools which we are using to enhance our site. 
• Some third-party tools used on this website, such as Mapbox and Google Analytics, may set additional cookies. The regional council has no control over cookies set by third parties and assumes no responsibility for them. 

How to refuse or delete cookies 

You may refuse the use of cookies and delete any cookies that are already stored on your computer by selecting the appropriate settings in your browser. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our site. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you visit our site. 

Instructions on how to delete and refuse cookies for various web browsers are available at www.allaboutcookies.orgopen_in_new. This is not part of our website, and TRC is not responsible for its content. 

Website analytics 

For the purpose of improving our website, we collect statistical information about your visit. This information is used for no other purpose and all users are anonymous and not personally identifiable. Information that we collect includes: 

• IP addresses (most home users will have temporary IP addresses issued by their Internet Service Provider on a session-by-session basis) 
• Search terms 
• Pages accessed and links clicked 
• Dates and times of visits 
• The immediate previous site visited if used as a referrer 
• Device type (PC, tablet or smartphone)   
• Operating systems (eg Windows, Mac) 
• Web browsers 

Does Taranaki Regional Council share 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, our operators and our website partners. These are for legitimate business reasons only, including allowing us to provide you services or contact you. 

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

How is your information stored? 

We may retain all personal information that we collect (on both our active systems and our archive systems), for as long as is necessary for us to carry out the purposes for which the information was collected (including for the purpose of providing services to you). For registration and account information, this means that the information is likely to be retained for the period of time that we consider your account (registered card or online account) to be active. 

The Public Records Act 2005 requires us to retain “protected records” indefinitely. In some circumstances, your personal information may be included within a protected record. 

The location at which we store your personal information will depend on the nature and purpose of the information and the manner in which you supply it to us. We may use, process, and store your personal information at our premises and/or storage facilities (whether in New Zealand or overseas). 

Access to your personal information and your rights 

You have the right to know what information we hold about you, to request a copy and to request that we correct your information if inaccurate. 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. 

If you would like to contact us about how we collect and manage personal information, ask whether we hold information about you, ask for access to copies of information we hold about you, or ask for correction to information we hold about you, you can contact us by: 

• email to info@trc.govt.nz
• phone on  0800 736 222 or 06 765 7127
• post to Taranaki Regional Council, Private Bag 713, Stratford 4332, New Zealand

When contacting us, please quote your name and address. We would be grateful if you could also provide brief details of what your query relates to (for example, what information you want a copy of, or personal information that you would like to be corrected).