Revenues and Benefits

We are Tunbridge Wells Borough Council Revenues & Benefits.  We provide our services to borough residents aged  over 18.

Tunbridge Wells residents can contact us by letter, email or phone.

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

Email: dataprotection@tunbridgewells.gov.uk
Telephone: 01892 526121

We collect your name, e-mail and postal address and telephone number. Where relevant we may also collect your National Insurance number, Council Tax band, property and/or account references, bank sort codes and account numbers, health/disability information, criminal background, financial, court proceedings, visa and/or employment details.

We collect information from you when you visit tunbridgewells.gov.uk and when you communicate with us in any way.

We may also receive electronic transfers of your information from central government departments, mainly the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and HM Revenues & Customs (HMRC).

Most Revenues & Benefits services, and in fact most Council services, are mandatory; we must offer them by law.  Our mandatory functions are tightly controlled by central government so as to result in a similar level of service across the country (e.g. the administration of Housing Benefit).

We offer these services in compliance with a legal obligation:

• Council Tax
• Council Tax Energy Rebate
• Exceptional hardship payments
• Housing Benefit investigations
• The prevention or detection of crime, including fraud

We offer these services as tasks carried out in the public interest:

• Discretionary Housing Payments
• Housing Benefit
• Council Tax Reduction Scheme

We also process your personal information to meet our legal, compliance and regulatory obligations, such as to respond to a legal claim, summons or regulatory order.

Under UK GDPR, we will use your information to:

• monitor and recover owed Council Tax
• enable the Council to determine entitlement and process awards for discretionary schemes, including:
  • Discretionary Housing Payments,
  • Exceptional Hardship Payments
  • Energy Rebate Scheme
  • Household Support Fund
• ensure the correctness of all means-tested awards
• monitor the effectiveness of the above schemes’ functions
• combat crime, including fraud, and
• fulfill the purposes set out in the Kent & Medway Information Sharing Agreement (K&MISA).

We may share your data with:

• agencies with whom we have a duty to co-operate, such as HM Courts
• other Council services for purposes compatible with those listed
• Central Government for compatible purposes including, but not limited to, the Cabinet Office, and the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). Please note that data derived from DWP and HMRC will be used in the testing or development environment
• Maidstone Borough Council/IT on our behalf, and
• K&MISA signatories, for purposes compatible with those listed
• Valuation Office Agency (VOA)
• Keysight Technologies
• software providers, including :
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) 
    Your information will be transferred to Ireland when it is processed by our software provider, AWS.
  • Bottomline Technologies
  • Cammax
  • Capita
  • Civica
  • Granicus

If you request a service from us that is means tested, such as a bulky waste collection or pest control services, your national insurance number may be verified against Benefit records.

We may share your data with LoCTA to check if you are registered with another Local Authority for Council Tax or Benefits.

Crime

We may share your data with these organisations for the purposes of fighting crime:

• Destin Solutions
• Intec for Business
• Kent Intelligence Network
• Kent Registrars
• Mid-Kent Fraud and Compliance Partnership
• Police including Action Fraud and other law enforcement agencies
• National Fraud Initiative
• National Anti Fraud Network

• 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 the right to challenge a decision that affects you that has been made automatically without human intervention, for example an online form with an instant decision.

You can find a  guide to your individual rights on the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO’s) webpage.

We keep data only for as long as we need it.  Normally this is between three and six years.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have questions about this.

The Council does not share your information with countries outside of the UK without ensuring that sufficient safeguards are in place that are equivalent to the UK Data Protection legislation or the UK GDPR. For this purpose, we do not share your information outside the UK.

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.

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.

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 privacy and cookies webpage.

If you would like to make a complaint regarding the use of your personal data you can 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):

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

Local rate telephone: 0303 123 1113
National rate telephone: 01625 545745

Website: https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us.