Lands and Survey - Privacy Statement

The Lands and Survey Department (L&S) is committed to data protection and safeguarding the rights of all our customers in relation to the processing of their personal data. This Privacy Statement sets out the Department’s policy in relation to our obligations under the Data Protection Law (DPL). Protecting your privacy is very important to us; we respect your personal information and your right to privacy. Consequently, we will treat all information and personal data provided to us as confidential, in accordance with the DPL.

If you contact us through this website and your communication contains personal information, we will process that information in compliance with the DPL. We may change our privacy statement from time to time by publishing changes to it on our website. We encourage you to check our website periodically to ensure that you are aware of our current policy.

Our Data Privacy Policy

Our website contains links to websites of other organizations whose data protection and privacy practices may differ from ours. These links are only provided for your convenience. L&S is not responsible for the content and privacy practices of those other websites and we encourage you to consult the individual privacy notices of those sites

If you are accessing CaymanLandinfo (our subscription service) or Online Forms through this website, your personal information will be managed in accordance with this privacy statement and the terms and conditions specified in your Licence Agreement.

By using this website, you consent to the data practices described in this statement. If you are only browsing this website, we do not capture data that allows us to identify you individually. If you contact us through this website and your communication contains personal information, we will process that information in compliance with the DPL.

 

Collection of your Personal Data

L&S is the data controller for the personal information provided to us and we will process the data in a fair and lawful manner. L&S has a statutory obligation to make certain information available from the public records that it maintains. As a result, we collect personal data only for the purpose of completing and maintaining the public Parcel Register, street addressing requirements, authentication of legal survey plans, processing land compensation under the Roads Law and the provision of services on behalf of the Cayman Islands Government and to the general public.

Information contained on the publicly available registers may include personal information, where required for the operation and maintenance of such registers.

We are responsible for the administration of land related services and we do this by the following:

  • Maintaining the Parcel Registers under the Registered Land Law and the Strata Title Registration Law
  • A power of Attorney Index kept under the Registered Land Law
  • Regulating the land surveying practice on the islands under the Land Surveyors Law
  • The assessment and adjudication of the valuation of land and buildings for Stamp Duty purposes
  • The Management of Crown Estate, including the acquisition and disposal of property on behalf of Government
  • Meeting associated statutory obligations
  • Providing products and services which may include:
    • Document registration services
    • Plan authentication services
    • Stamp duty assessment and collection services
    • Process request for Crown properties
    • Services which includes data maintained or derived from public records (example property sales data and other mapping services)
    • Enable communication with customers
    • Process payments for L&S services.
  • Providing Street Addressing data.

About Personal Data

Personal data is information about an individual that makes it easy to reasonably identify them. The type of personal data that we collect can include:

Application Data

All data submitted when registering/making an application, including those entered on any application forms prescribed by regulation or other legislation.

Identity Data

Includes but not limited to first name, middle name, last name, maiden name, title, marital status, date of birth and gender.

Contact data

Includes physical addresses, mailing addresses, email addresses and phone numbers, occupation/company positions.

Financial Data

This includes banking and/or payment details.

Transaction Data

Details on the type of applications made, payments made, and other details of products and services purchased from L&S.

Technical Data

Data such as internet protocol (IP) addresses, login data, browser type and version, domain names, access times and referring website addresses.

Profile data

Details such as your usernames, passwords, purchases or orders made by you, your feedback and survey responses.

Usage data

May include information about when and the frequency with which you use our website, products and services.

The personal information that we collect about you allows us to provide you with:

  • Statutory services
  • Additional services that are non-statutory
  • Customer service
  • Improved customer experience
  • Commercial services

We are responsible for the administration of land related services and we do this by the following:

  • Registered Land Law
  • Strata Titles Registration Law
  • Land Surveyors Law
  • Stamp Duty Law
  • Land Acquisition Law
  • Governor Vesting of Lands Law
  • Freedom of Information Law
  • Roads (Naming and Numbering) Law
  • Roads Law
  • Data Protection Law

We do not collect any special categories of personal data such as race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, and genetic or biometric data.
It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. You can keep us informed of your personal data changes by contacting us as Here.

How We Collect Personal Data

Your personal data will either have been provided by you directly to us or provided by a third party authorized to act on your behalf, such as attorneys-at-law, charges, real estate agents, Licensed Land Surveyors or Valuation Surveyors.

The personal data is usually collected when you:

  • Make applications or apply for our services directly or through a third party
  • Create an account with us for electronic services
  • Deal with us over the telephone
  • Provide feedback on our website
  • Request us to contact you on visiting our website
  • Make an enquiry in person, FOI or Data Protection request
  • Make a complaint or compliment

Using and Disclosing Personal Data

The Registered Land Law section 35 provides that the parcel register is open to the public and may be searched and inspected by any person, upon the payment of a fee. Searches may be made based on individual registers or instruments (by their specific number) or by name. Consequently, an owner’s contact information is accessible through a search. Upon payment of the fee, any person can apply for official copies of the register, plans, and registration documents held by L&S. This is information is required under the Registered Land Law and is therefore not available under the Freedom of Information Law.

When you make registration or legal survey submissions you provide us with personal data. The use of this information is governed by legislation. When we handle personal information that you give us as a part of the registration functions, your rights are limited; for example, you cannot ask us to remove or delete information from the register that we are obligated to maintain by law. We are permitted to use personal data for those purposes. We retain records relating to land registration for as long as our records are in force and we are required to keep them to meet our statutory obligations.

L&S uses and may share personal data collected from customers for the purposes of operating the land registry and survey systems and processing request for Crown properties as well as compensation for compulsory acquisition, or to carry out other necessary activities related to land registration, survey or Crown Estate management systems. We may share information with other government departments, law enforcement and other regulatory bodies. Some of these include:

  • L&S requests for legal advice from the Attorney General’s Chambers
  • For the purposes of collecting a debt
  • To assist law enforcement in helping to prevent fraud and detect crime, for example, property fraud or where serious misconduct is suspected
  • To other Government Departments or regulatory bodies
  • Under the Freedom of Information Law

What Tools we Use to Collect Data

As you interact with our website, we may automatically collect transaction data and technical data about your browsing actions, equipment, and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies and other similar technologies.

Evidence of Identity

For certain applications, in order to verify that we are dealing with the person authorized to make such an application, or that you fall into the categories prescribed by law, we may request proof of identity.


Proof of identity provided by you may be kept indefinitely by us as evidence of identity checks when dealing with your application for registration or other services. We may hold your personal data in either electronic or hard copy form. Identity evidence is not publicly available under the Registered Land Law; but, this information may be shared with law enforcement. Otherwise, L&S takes reasonable steps to protect evidence of identity from loss, misuse or unauthorized disclosure.


Cookies

L&S uses “cookies” to help personalize your online experience. A cookie is a text file placed on your hard disk by a Web page server. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you, and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you. Cookies are used to temporarily retain limited pertinent information so our services operate efficiently.

  • Collect or store any information that could be used to identify the user
  • Make any attempt to find out the identity of the user
  • Associate any data gathered with any personally identifying information from any other source

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most Web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of our services or Web sites.

The cookies we use are different for each service. You can find details of each cookie, including what they are used for and for how long they remain on your computer in your browser settings.


Links

Our website may contain links to websites operated by third parties. Those links are provided for convenience and may not remain current or be maintained. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of, or any content on, those linked websites, and have no control over or rights in those linked websites. The privacy policies that apply to these other websites may differ substantially from our privacy statement and we encourage individuals to read them before using those websites.


Customer Enquiries of Data

When you contact us by email, letter, or phone, we collect contact data from you. You may need to provide us with identity data, contact data, together with sufficient information about your query, such as Block and Parcel Number to enable our support staff to deal with your queries.

Where enquiries are made we will only use the information supplied to us to deal with the enquiry and any subsequent queries.

Cayman Land Info

L&S retains all personal and organisational data supplied for subscription services to our CaymanLandinfo portal. We may also record any enquiries that you make about your account. You are responsible in making sure that account information is up to date, adding and removing staff when key organisational changes occur.

Business accounts will be kept in accordance with these Agreements. If an account is terminated it will be de-activated from our system; however, account data may be retained indefinitely to meet our obligations for audit purposes.

Disclosure of Data

Given the nature of the public registries we manage and the services that we offer, we may disclose personal data outside of the Cayman Islands, where persons or entities who undertake searches of, or request information from, the public registry are located outside of the Cayman Islands.


Correction of Your Personal Data

L&S takes reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information that we collect, use and disclose is accurate, complete and up-to-date. If you find that the personal data that we hold about you is inaccurate, incomplete or out-of-date, please contact us, setting out the personal data involved and the reason you consider it to be inaccurate. L&S will take appropriate steps to ensure that your personal data is corrected or explain to you why we will not do so. However, where you identify that the personal information we hold is inaccurate, out-of-date or incomplete as it relates to the parcel register, there is a statutory provision for making those changes (by completing a form) and an associated fee for making the amendment.


Data Breaches

To prevent unauthorized access and to ensure proper use of information, we have organisational and technical processes to safeguard and secure the information we collect. In addition, we limit access to personal data to those employees, agents and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on L&S instructions and they have a duty of confidentiality.

In accordance with the Data Protection Law, L&S has in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach, including notifying the Office of the Ombudsman and affected individuals where we are legally required to do so.

For further information see L&S Data Protection Policy

Right of Access

You have the right to access your own personal data that we hold on you. To do so, you must submit a request to us in writing, along with proof of identity for authentication. There is no fee associated with a subject access request. Information contained in the parcel register is available under the Registered Land Law and should be requested using our statutory procedures and paying the required fees.


Time for Processing Requests

We will acknowledge your request and confirm the anticipated date by which we will respond. This is usually within 30 days unless additional time is needed due to the complexity of the request. In the unlikely event that it cannot be completed within this timeframe, notification will be given to the applicant. See our Subject Access Request Form.


Right to Restrict Processing

In certain circumstances, you have the right to ask us to stop processing or using your personal data. However, this cannot interfere with the statutory authority of L&S, for example: where the data is included in the public register as we are legally required to maintain this and make it available to the public under the Registered Land Law. You may apply in writing to L&S, clearly setting out the personal data involved and the reasons you consider processing to be restricted. We will either grant your request or explain why we will not do so.


Automated Decision Making

You have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling which significantly affects you. Applications for statutory services including registration documents are not subject to automated processing.