Housing and Homelessness - Privacy notice

Who we are and what we do

The council is a data controller under the Data Protection Legislation as we collect and process personal information about you in order to provide Housing and Homelessness Services and meet our statutory and regulatory obligations.

This notice explains why we ask for your personal information, how that information will be used and how you can access your records.

Any questions regarding our privacy practices should be sent to:

Data Protection Officer (DPO)
West Oxfordshire District Council
Council Offices, Witney, OX28 1NB
Email: data.protection@westoxon.gov.uk
Tel: 01993 861194

Why we need your information and how we use it

The council has to collect personal information from individuals to enable us to fulfil our statutory obligations in terms of

Providing Housing and Homelessness Services to the residents, landlords and tenants of the district;
Identifying housing needs and managing the Housing Register;
Determining whether the council has a Homelessness Duty and providing emergency accommodation;
Sharing Information across local authorities to optimise and improve the delivery and commissioning of rough sleeping and single homelessness service providers.
Administering grant applications e.g. Disability Facility Grants
Detecting and preventing fraud and crime,
Reporting the number of homes in our area that have been empty for more than six months and have been brought subsequently back into use,

We have a statutory obligation to provide these services in accordance with the following legislations, the list is not exhaustive:

Housing Acts 1985, 1988, 1996
Homelessness Act 2002
Prevention of Social Housing Fraud Act 2012
Right to Rent Act 2015
Homelessness Reduction Act 2017
Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996

What type of information is collected from you

In order to administer our services we collect the following information from you:

name
address
date of birth
contact details (address, email, telephone number etc)
National Insurance Number
Financial information (i.e. bank details and statements, income)
health information
passport details
driving license
photographs
racial or ethnic information
religious or philosophical beliefs
criminal convictions
sexual orientation

We will only ask for personal information that is appropriate to enable us to deliver our services. In some cases, you can refuse to provide your details if you deem a request to be inappropriate. However, you should note that this may impact on our ability to provide some services to you.

Who your information may be shared with (internally and externally)

Your information may be shared with:

Other services at our Partner Authorities, such as Housing Benefit, for the express purpose of processing your application
Other organisations in accordance with prevailing Data Protection Legislation
Across local authorities to improve the delivery and commissioning of rough sleeping and single homelessness service providers
Government departments
Registered social landlords
Private sector landlords
support agencies
other Local Authorities
other Council Services

How long we keep your information (retention period)

Data is only held as long as is necessary, unless superseded by statutory regulation, and disposed of securely when it is no longer needed.

How we protect your Information

We will not transfer your personal data outside the EU without your consent.

We have implemented generally accepted standards of technology and operational security in order to protect personal data from loss, misuse, or unauthorised alteration or destruction.

Please note however that where you are transmitting information to us over the internet this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure.

For any payments which we take from you online we will use a recognised online secure payment system.

We will notify you promptly in the event of any breach of your personal data which might expose you to serious risk.

Your rights

You have rights under the Data Protection Legislations:

to access your personal data
to be provided with information about how your personal data is processed
to have your personal data corrected
to have your personal data erased in certain circumstances
to object to or restrict how your personal data is processed
to have your personal data transferred to yourself or to another business in certain circumstances
you have the right to be told if we have made a mistake whilst processing your data and we will self report breaches to the Commissioner.

How you can access, update or correct your information

The Data Protection Legislation allows you to find out what information is held about you, on paper and computer records. This is known as ‘right of subject access’ and applies to your Housing and Homelessness Services data along with all other personal records. For more information see our data protection page.

If you wish to see a copy of your records you should contact the Data Protection Officer. You are entitled to receive a copy of our records free of charge, within a month.

In certain circumstances access to your records may be limited, for example, if the records you have asked for contain information relating to another person.

The accuracy of your information is important to us to be able to provide relevant services more quickly. We are working to make our record keeping more efficient. In the meantime, if you change your address or email address, or if any of your circumstances change or any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date please email us or write to us at:

Housing and Homelessness Services
West Oxfordshire District Council
Council Offices, Witney, OX28 1NB
Tel: 01993 861010
Email: housing@westoxon.gov.uk

Further information

If you would like to know more about how we use your information or if for any reason you do not wish to have your information used, email data.protection@westoxon.gov.uk.

You can also complain to the Information Commissioner.

We reserve the right to update this privacy notice from time to time by publishing a new version here on our website.