E.ON UK GROUP OF THE ELECTRICITY SUPPLY PENSION SCHEME (the ‘Scheme’)
Data Protection notification
Background
Twenty years after the implementation of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA 1998), it was deemed necessary to update data protection law to take into account technology changes and to harmonise data protection law across Europe. This was achieved by an EU data protection law called The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which applied from 25 May 2018 and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018), which introduced the GDPR to UK law and repealed and replaced the DPA 1998. Whilst the UK has left the EU, the GDPR has been retained in UK law as the UK GDPR, which sits alongside an amended version of the DPA 2018.
The following information sets out how we use your personal data as a member of the Scheme and what rights UK data protection law gives you in respect of your data. Personal data broadly means information that identifies (or which could, with other information that we hold or are likely to hold, identify) a living individual. We may also hold information about your family and dependants.
How we use information about you
We, the Group Trustee of the E.ON UK Group of the ESPS have handled personal information in accordance with GDPR (as amended by UK GDPR) and the DPA 2018 since May 2018.
The Group Trustee is a ‘data controller’ in respect of your personal information for the purposes of applicable data protection legislation. We will use your personal details in order to deal with and pay any benefits you may be entitled to under the rules of the Scheme.
Purpose of using information
We process information or data for the reasons/purposes mentioned above. This information may include:
- personal details such as your name, gender, age, date of birth, email address, postal address, telephone or mobile number
- family, lifestyle and social circumstances such as details about current marriage and partnerships and marital history, details of family and dependants
- employment details such as pensionable pay, length of service, employment and career history
- financial details such as bank account details to process pension payments
We may also need to process sensitive classes of information, such as physical or mental health details, in order to administer ill-health retirement payments and applications.
This information may be obtained from your employer, ex-employer, government agencies, service providers or from yourself.
We will only collect and use your personal information where:
- there is a legal obligation for us to do so;
- it is for our legitimate business interests; or
- you have given us your consent to do so.
Our legitimate business interests include fulfilling our role in dealing with, assessing eligibility for and paying any benefits you may be entitled to. We will not use your data for our legitimate business interests if they are overridden by your interests, rights or freedoms.
You do not have to provide any of the information that we may request from you, but there may be a delay in the payment of your benefits if that information is not provided. It may also result in a decision being taken based only on the information available, which could exclude information favourable to your case.
If we are processing your data on the basis of your consent, you can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting our administrators, Broadstone (details shown on the back page). The withdrawal of consent will not affect the processing of personal data carried out before consent was withdrawn. Withdrawal of consent could delay the payment of your benefits.
Who the information may be shared with
From time to time, we may need to share your information with other organisations. Where this is necessary, we are required to comply with all aspects of the UK GDPR and the DPA 2018. The types of organisations we may need to share some of your information with are:
- the scheme’s administrator (Broadstone)
- our service providers, professional advisers and auditors (such as Aon Hewitt and the Scheme Actuary, and our legal advisers, who in certain circumstances will also be ‘data controllers’ – see the 'Other data controllers' section below
- claimants, beneficiaries, assignees and payees
- pension schemes with which the person whose personal information we are processing has an association
- ombudsmen and regulatory authorities
- family, associates or representatives of the person whose personal data we are processing
- tracing agencies
- the sponsoring company
- persons in connection with any sale, merger, acquisition, disposal, reorganisation or similar change of the sponsoring company’s business (including any potential or actual purchaser of that business and that purchaser’s advisers).
Retention of data
One of the key principles of the UK GDPR and the DPA 2018 is that the personal data we store and process shall be adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary for the purpose it was originally collected. Our standard policy is for information or data to be kept for only as long as necessary. It is then disposed of in a managed and secure way. However, as pensions are a long-term savings vehicle, it may be necessary to retain your personal data for the remainder of your life and any dependants’ lives in order to pay you the benefits you are entitled to, along with any dependant’s benefits payable.
Transferring data overseas
In some circumstances, we or our service providers may transfer personal data to a country outside the UK. Where the countries to which your personal information is transferred may not offer an equivalent level of protection for personal information to the laws of the UK, we or our service providers will ensure that appropriate and suitable safeguards are put in place.
If, at any time, we propose to use your personal data for any other reason than outlined, we will provide you with further details as to why and for what reason we intend to do so.
Your rights
You will have a number of rights under the GDPR. These include the right to:
- see the information we hold about you;
- request personal data to be amended if it is inaccurate or incomplete;
- request the deletion or removal of personal data where there is no compelling reason for its continued use;
- block or restrict the processing of your personal data; and
- object to the processing of your personal data.
There is also a right under the UK GDPR to receive your personal data (in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format) and to transfer your data to another service provider or data controller. This right applies where your data is being processed on the basis of your consent or in line with a contract to which you are party. Please note that, for the majority of members, this is not applicable as we rely on our legitimate business interest or compliance with our legal obligations to collect and process your data rather than individual consent or contracts.
If you wish to exercise any of your rights or have concerns about the processing of your personal data or wish to raise any issues in relation to data protection, including in relation to the use of it by the Group Trustee, please contact:
The Group Trustee of the E.ON UK Group of the ESPS
c/o Broadstone
2 Rye Hill Office Park
Birmingham Road
Coventry
CV5 9AB
Email: EON@broadstone.co.uk
Telephone: 02476 472541
If you are acting on behalf of a child, we may also hold and use your personal information, which will be dealt with on the same basis as set out earlier.
If you are unhappy with how your personal information is being handled, you also have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office, an independent body set up to uphold information rights, which will investigate your complaint. The ICO can be contacted at:
Address: Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF
Telephone number: 0303 123 1113
Other ‘data controllers’
As mentioned above, Aon and the Scheme Actuary also act as data controllers in relation to your personal information in certain circumstances and they have provided the following brief description on how they may use your information to support us in the running of the Scheme:
Aon Solutions UK Limited (and, where appointed, the Scheme Actuary - together "Aon") has been appointed to provide pensions advisory and calculation services that relate to your membership of the pension scheme. In doing so Aon will use personal information about you, such as your name and contact details, information about your pension contributions, age of retirement, and in some limited circumstances information about your health (where this impacts your retirement age) in order to be able to provide these services. The purposes for which we use personal information will include management of the pension scheme and your membership within it, funding the pension scheme (i.e. helping to ensure that the funds within the pension scheme are sufficient to cover the members who are party to it), liability management (that is to say providing advice on the different ways benefits could be determined, and drawn, from the pension scheme), scheme actuary duties (which include assessing individuals who are members of the pension scheme and assessing how the make-up of the membership may affect the amounts payable and when they become payable so as to manage the pension scheme appropriately), regulatory compliance, process and service improvement and benchmarking.
We may pass your personal information to third parties such as financial advisors and benefits providers, insurers, our affiliates and service providers and to certain regulatory bodies where legally required to do so. Depending on the circumstances, this may involve a transfer of data outside the UK and the European Economic Area to countries that have less robust data protection laws. Any such transfer will be made with appropriate safeguards in place.
Our legal advisers, DLA Piper, are also data controllers in relation to the Scheme. They will only have access to Personal Data which the Group Trustee shares with them and they will only use that Personal Data for the purposes of providing legal advice to the Group Trustee and for no other purpose.
September 2025
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