UK GDPR privacy notices - Housing Tenant Services and Buildings Maintenance Privacy Notice

Introduction

Housing Tenant Services and Buildings Maintenance have provided this privacy notice to help you understand how we collect, use and protect your information whilst we provide you with landlord and homeownership services for your home.

The document below will describe how we may collect and process your personal information.

The purpose of this document is to clearly acknowledge the council’s responsibilities in relation to the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Definitions

Personal data means any information related to an identified or identifiable natural (living) person (‘data subject’) i.e. a person that can be directly or indirectly identified by reference to a name, ID reference number, email address, location data, or physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or societal identifier.

Special personal data, previously known as ‘sensitive personal data’, relates to race, ethnic origin, politics, religion, trade union membership, genetic data, biometric data, health, sex life or sexual orientation. Records of criminal personal data must also be treated in a similar way.

Data Controller determines the purposes and means of processing personal data.

Data Processor is responsible for any operation which is performed on personal data on behalf of the controller, e.g. collection, recording, organisation, structuring, storage, adaption or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or making available, alignment or combination, restriction, erasure or destruction.

Third Party is someone/somebody who is not the Data Controller, the Data Processor or the Data Subject.

Who we are

We are your landlord and have a legal contract with you in the form of a Tenancy Agreement, Lease or Licence. 

East Suffolk Council as a registered provider of social housing  have obligations placed on us by the Regulator of Social Housing in line with legislation  such as: 

• Housing and Regeneration Act 2008
• Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023
• Regulator of Social Housing's (RSH) consumer standards on the Safety and Quality Standards
• Landlord and Tenant Act 1985
• Housing Act 1985
• Housing Act 2004
• Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018
• Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES) Regulations

The council is the ‘data controller’ for the information which is collated and processed. This means we are responsible for deciding how we can use your information. If you want more information regarding the services delivered, please go to our website.

The council regards lawful and correct treatment of personal information as critical to their successful operations, maintaining confidence between the council and those with whom they carry out business. The council will ensure that they treat personal information correctly in accordance with the law. Services are provided to you under statutory, contractual and discretionary obligations.

The Data Protection Officer for ESC is Siobhan Martin, Head of Internal Audit, and can be contacted at dataprotection@eastsuffolk.gov.uk.

How the law protects you

UK GDPR says that we are allowed to use personal information only if we have a proper reason to do so. More information on how the law protects you can be found on the East Suffolk website.

Our responsibilities

UK GDPR provides us with main responsibilities for processing personal data. All personal information provided by you is held securely and in confidence by us in our computerised and other records. When we process your personal information, we do so in compliance with UK GDPR. For further information on our responsibilities, please see our website.

Your rights

The UK GDPR and DPA 2018 provide you with the following rights:

• The right to be informed: You have the right to be informed about the collection and use of your personal data, and this is outlined in this privacy notice.
• The right of access: You have the right to request access to the personal data we may hold about you. This is undertaken using a Subject Access Request.
• The right to rectification: You have the right to request that inaccurate personal data we hold is rectified.
• The right to erasure: In certain circumstances, you have ‘the right to be forgotten’ and have your personal data erased.
• The right to restrict processing: In certain circumstances, you have the right to request the restriction or suppression of your personal data.
• The right to data portability: In certain circumstances, you have the right to request to obtain your own personal data for your own use or to give to other organisations.
• The right to object: In certain circumstances, you have the right to object to your personal data being collated, stored and processed.
• Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling: You have the right to request that we do not make our decisions based on solely an automated process, and you can object to an automated decision and ask that a person reviews it in certain circumstances.
• The right to withdraw consent: In our discretionary service provisions, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.
• The right to complain: You have the right to complain through our complaints procedure, and then to the Information Commissioner. Any requests in relation to your rights with regard to the personal data we hold should be made verbally or in writing to the Data Protection Officer. For further information on your rights, please see the ICO website.

Your responsibilities

You are responsible for making sure you give us accurate and up to date information, and to let us know if any personal information we hold is incorrect.

When do we collect information about you?

We collect information about you from different places, including:

• Your Housing Register application
• Your Mutual Exchange application
• Your Home Ownership application
• Your HomeBuy application
• Directly from you
• Information from Suffolk County Council/Home Office/Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities in relation to Refugee’s and Asylum Seekers
• From suppliers who manage the Council’s warden call monitoring systems in our Retired Living and Temporary Accommodation Scheme properties to ensure tenants’ safety.

What information do we maintain?

The information about you which we will maintain will include:

• Name of tenants
• Date of birth of tenants
• National Insurance numbers of tenants
• Gender of tenants
• Photos of tenants
• Names of household members
• Date of birth of household members
• Gender of household members
• Address
• Contact telephone numbers
• Contact email addresses
• Bank account details for Direct Debit payments
• Income and expenditure in relation to rent arrears cases
• Correspondence address
• Religion
• Ethnic origin
• Sexual orientation
• Health data

How do we use your information?

We will be using your information to:

• Manage your rent account using profiling software, but not automated decision-making software
• Maintain, repair and improve your property in line with ESC policies and Government issued legislation, guidance and or funding
• Assess your shared ownership repair claim
• Manage your tenancy
• Monitor, record, store and use call recordings with you in order to check any instructions given to us, for training purposes, for crime prevention and to improve the quality of our customer services.
• Take all reasonable steps to communicate and engage with our tenants in order to meet our statutory duty in line with the Regulator of Social Housing issued Consumer Standards Codes of Practice (April 2024)
• Manage Anti-social behaviour
• Target our financial inclusion work using profiling software, but not automated decision-making software
• Provide a secure tenants portal (myEastSuffolk/myHome) to allow you to view your rent account, log repair and self-serve on many aspects of tenancy management
• Contact tenants and leaseholders via letter, email, telephone call, text messaging and face-to-face for all aspects of tenancy and leasehold management. Our text messaging service provider captures the IP address of all messages sent. The Council uses this information to ascertain whether a message was received or opened.
• Invite you to participate in specific trials of new Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and digital systems so we can improve the services that East Suffolk council provides
• Under resettlement schemes for Refugees and Asylum Seekers.

We will not use your personal data for other purposes other than for what it was collated unless we have obtained your consent or for other lawful purposes (e.g. detection and prevention of fraud).

We will always provide further information on the sharing of your data before we ask you to give consent for it to be used for other purposes e.g. for an ICT trial. We do not use automated decision making.

How long do we keep your information?

We will hold your personal information for the entire time you are a tenant with us, and then for 6 years after your tenancy ends. This is in order to allow us to fulfil our obligations as your landlord and ensure any account information that is required for detailed tenancy references is still available for 6 years after your tenancy ends.

For Shared Ownership tenants, we will hold your personal information until East Suffolk Council no longer owns a percentage of your property.

Following this period, we will continue to keep a record indefinitely of tenants’ names and addresses, legal action and any bad debts in order to prove tenancy history for you for references and Right to Buy applications. You can request that this historical personal information is deleted at any time, but should be aware that this means we will no longer be able to provide evidence of your past tenancies and you may be refused for a future tenancy with us as we will be unable to prove you kept to the terms and conditions of your tenancy.

Data sharing

We will share your personal information with:

• Contractors will receive your contact details in order to book appointments for repairs, maintenance, improvements and to inspect works carried out.
• With contractors appointed by East Suffolk Council to review our procedures to ensure we are meeting our statutory obligations to maintain and repair your property.
• Contact information is shared with our contracted provider to support communication and engagement with our tenants in order to meet our statutory duty in line with the Regulator of Social Housing issued Consumer Standards Codes of Practice (April 2024)
• Mailing information is shared with print companies for the distribution of the tenant’s magazine.
• External independent companies working on behalf of East Suffolk Council to collect Customer Satisfaction data such as tenant satisfaction surveys.
• Managing agents working on behalf of the council will receive information relating only to those tenants whose properties they are responsible for managing, to allow them to manage on our behalf.
• Suppliers who provide the Council’s warden call monitoring services in our Retired Living and Temporary Accommodation Scheme properties to ensure tenants’ safety and support in a medical emergency.
• With your consent, we share your information with utility companies in order to ensure you have accounts for all essential services of water, electricity and gas.
• External ICT contractors that provide hardware and software to the council for the purposes of managing your tenancy.
• External partners or suppliers for the purpose of testing new or upgraded ICT systems and approaches so we can improve the services that we provide to you (more convenient, flexible, efficient, or cheaper to operate).
• Department for Energy Security & Net Zero (DESNZ) where you are:
  • The tenant who received property upgrades/maintenance under the Warm Homes WAVE 3 funding. This will be limited to your address, property characteristics and details of the installation.
  • Contractors/consultants procured to work on behalf of East Suffolk Council in relation to the Warm Homes WAVE 3 installations.
  • For further information on what information will be shared with DESNZ and how that will be used please see the DESNZ privacy notice.
• Support providers, registered providers and third party private landlords in relation to Refugee and Asylum Seekers Resettlement programmes.
• To ensure we deliver our statutory obligations, we will share information, where applicable, with the Suffolk Office of Data and Analytics for analytical purposes to support us in meeting our statutory functions.

Transferring your information overseas

Currently, we do not transfer any personal information outside of the European Economic Area (EEA).

National Fraud Initiative (NFI)

We may share information provided to us with other bodies responsible for auditing, or administering public funds, or where undertaking a public function, in order to prevent and detect fraud. For further information, see the East Suffolk website.