Housing Privacy Notice

Tunbridge Wells Borough Council, Mount Pleasant Road, Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, TN1 1RS

Email: dataprotection@tunbridgewells.gov.uk

Telephone: 01892 526121

We collect information from you when you visit tunbridgewells.gov.uk; also when you contact us in writing, provide evidence, speak to us on the phone, by email or any other type of electronic communication, or talk to us face to face.

Information like your name and address. Sometimes we collect other information you may feel is sensitive to you. This might be financial or health information, for example.

To provide housing services to the residents, landlords and tenants of the borough, because it is in the wider public interest to do so. If you do not give us your personal information, we may be unable to provide this service to you.

We will use your information to:

Assess applications or service requests for all housing services, and to manage the housing register. We won't use it for any other purposes without your consent, or without telling you first.

Sometimes we have to give it to other authorities, organisations or people. This would be for the prevention or detection of crime, or because of legal matters, for example. We don't need your consent to do this, but if we can, we'll let you know if we've passed your information on.

Maidstone Borough Council stores your information on our behalf. View the Maidstone Borough Council privacy information.

Kent Homechoice partners and other local authorities in the UK may request your information from us and use it if they offer you services (such as housing assistance or social services). They may use it for their own reasons that are different to ours, but they still have to look after it in the same way. View the Kent Homechoice partners privacy information. For privacy information for other UK authorities, please visit the relevant website.

Huume, our software providers, will also use your information, but only on our instructions. They won’t use it for any other reasons, and they have to look after it in the same way we would. View Huume’s Privacy, Legal and Cookie Policy.

Housing Reviews Limited, who we contract to carry out homelessness reviews on our behalf, in accordance with Section 202 of the Housing Act 1996, will also use your information but only on our instructions. Also, as part of our Section 184 enquiries we or Housing Reviews Ltd may seek independent medical advice from Now Medical who will use your information but only on our or Housing Reviews Ltd instructions.

If you make a payment to us, Civica will also use your information, but only on our instructions. They won’t use it for any other reasons, and they have to look after it in the same way we would. View Civica's privacy information.

If you make a payment to us by direct debit, or we pay you by BACS, Bottomline Technologies will also process your information, but only on our instructions. They won’t use it for any other reasons, and they have to look after it in the same way we would. You can view their privacy information in their Privacy Policy page.

We are also required to provide the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) with your personal information for the purpose of evaluating and researching homelessness nationally.

If you have made a homeless application, MHCLG want to learn more about the help provided to people who are homeless or threatened with homelessness and those housed in an emergency as a result of coronavirus. This will help to improve services.

MHCLG want to use the information you provide about how you have become homeless (or threatened with homelessness), your housing history and the sort of things that you need help and support with.

MHCLG also wants to look at how you use other public services and benefits you receive. Your personal details (such as your name) will be needed for this, but the researchers will not know whose information they are looking at.

Any information provided to MHCLG will not be used by them to affect the services or benefits that you receive now or in the future or used to identify fraud. Your information will be kept safe and confidential, and handled with care and in accordance with the law. You can read the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government: Research on Homelessness privacy notice for more information and an explanation.

• Access – you can request copies of any of your personal information that is held by the council.
• Rectification – you can ask us to correct any incorrect information.
• Deletion – you can ask us to delete your personal information. The council can refuse to delete information if we have a lawful reason to keep this.
• Portability – you can ask us to transfer your personal data to different services or to you.
• Right to object or restrict processing – you have the right to object to how your data is being used and how it is going to be used in the future.
• Right to prevent automatic decisions – you have to challenge a decision that affects you that has been made automatically without human intervention, for example an online form with an instant decision.

We will only keep your information for as is necessary for the purpose for which it was collected. Once we no longer need it, we will retain it for a set period (a retention period) but not use it. When the retention period expires we will delete your information from our records. View our Retention Schedule.

What security precautions in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of your information?

We are strongly committed to data security and will take reasonable and appropriate steps to protect your personal information from unauthorised access, loss, misuse, alteration or corruption. We have put in place physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard the information you provide to us.

We want to ensure any information we hold is accurate. You can help us by promptly informing us of any changes to the information we hold about you.

There are no automated decisions in this process.

If you are accessing online services and are aged 13 or under‚ please get your parent/guardian's permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information.

What are cookies and why are they used?

Cookies are small text files which identify your computer to our servers. They are used to improve the user experience. View our privacy and cookies page to find out how we use them and how you can manage them.

If you would like to make a complaint regarding the use of your personal data you can contact our Data Protection Officer:

Email: dataprotection@tunbridgewells.gov.uk

For independent advice about data protection, privacy and data sharing issues, you can contact the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at:

Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

Telephone: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745 if you prefer to use a national rate number.

Alternatively, visit the ICO website or email casework@ico.org.uk.