Private Sector Housing Mandatory and Discretionary Grant Assistance 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 our website; also when you contact us in writing, speak to us on the phone, by email or any other type of electronic communication, or talk to us face to face.

We collect personal information about you such as your name, postal and email address, telephone number and date of birth.

We will also collect other information that you may feel is sensitive to you, for example financial, benefit and health information.

Our legal basis for using your information is:

Compliance with a legal obligation.

To provide services associated with a mandatory service to you and other residents in the borough. We are required by law to provide this service. In order for us to do this, you must provide your personal information to us.

To provide services associated with a discretionary service to the residents of the borough, this is in line with The Regulatory Reform (Housing Assistance) (England and Wales) Order 2002. If you do not give us your personal information, we may be unable to provide this service to you.

You can tell us to stop using your information at any time. But we may have to stop providing the service to you.

We use your information to assess your application for mandatory or discretionary assistance. We will not use it for any other purposes without your consent, or without telling you first.

The information Communications services collect will be stored by Maidstone Borough Council (MBC) on our behalf. You can view MBC privacy information on their website.

Town and Country Housing (TCH) will also use your information. 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. You can view TCH privacy information on their website.

What are your rights in relation to the personal information we process?

• 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. For further information please see our retention schedule.

What security precautions are 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 what cookies we use and how you can manage them at on our privacy and cookies page.

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 Information Commissioner's Office website or email casework@ico.org.uk.