Council Tax & Business Rates form part of the Directorate of Community Services and this document explains how information will be held about you and processed by the Revenues Service of the Council.
This notice should be read in conjunction with our Privacy Policy.
How do we get your information?
Most of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by you. We may also receive personal information indirectly, from the following sources:
Department for Work and Pensions
Other Government Departments
Estate Agents/Managing Agents
Energy / Utility Suppliers
Solicitors
Charitable Organisations
HMRC
Financial Organisations
Valuation Office Agency
What personal data do we process and why
The information we process about you will vary depending on the service being provided, but will fall within the following categories:
- Name
- Date of birth
- Address
- Email addresses
- Telephone numbers
- Financial information
- Employee data
- Website user stats
- References
- Income
- Photos
- Profession
- Disabilities
- Medical information
Information relating to health and wellbeing and other special category data
In order to meet our statutory and legal obligations in respect of these services, we may also need to process sensitive, or “special category” personal data about you, which could include data related to:
- Health/Medical Information
Why we collect personal information about you.
Wealden District Council is a data controller for the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation 2016 and Data Protection Act 2018. We collect, hold and use your personal data in order to assess and process your council tax or business rates.
We will only collect the personal data from you we need in order to do so
We use this information for the following purposes:
- deliver and manage the services we provide
- train and manage our workers who deliver those services
- investigate your queries or complaints you may have about our services
- check the quality of our services
- assist with research and planning of new services
Lawful basis for processing your personal data
We process personal data because it is necessary to comply with our legal obligations which are carried out in the public interest in line with the Council Tax (Administration and Enforcement) Regulations 1992 or the Non-Domestic Rating (Chargeable Amounts) (England) Regulations 2016.
And where we have:
- Your consent. If you would like to withdraw your consent, you can do this by contacting informationgovernance@wealden.gov.uk.
- We have a contractual obligation.
- We have a vital interest.
- We need it to perform a public task.
- We have a legitimate interest.
Who do we share your data with?
The data you provide may be disclosed with other departments of the Council or external organisations for related purposes or as required by law.
We may need to pass the personal information that we collect from you on to other agencies or governmental organisations (e.g., Department for Work and Pensions and HM Revenue and Customs) in order to assess and process your council tax or business rates payments.
We may also use and check your personal data for the investigation and prevention of fraud, anti-social behaviour and criminal activity. This may include sharing your information with police services, credit reference agencies, governmental organisations (e.g., Department for Work and Pensions and HM Revenue and Customs) and other local authorities.
We also take part in the National Fraud Initiative’s anti-fraud data matching exercise for these purposes. Where we need to disclose sensitive information, such as medical details, to a third party, we will only do so once we have obtained your explicit consent or where we are legally required to do so.
We may also disclose this information when necessary to prevent risk of harm to an individual. In some circumstances, such as under a court order, we are legally obliged to share information, and we may also share information with the Police and other enforcement agencies for the purposes of the prevention, investigation, detection, or prosecution of criminal offences.
We may also share information internally, in order to verify or confirm your personal details, to ensure our records are accurate and up to date.
Data held by this service will only be used by other internal departments or services when we are satisfied there is a lawful basis for doing so and is considered fair.
Do we use data processors?
Data processors are third parties who provide certain parts of our services for us. We have contracts in place with them and they cannot do anything with your personal information unless we have instructed them to do so. Our current data processors for this service are listed below
| Data Processor | Purpose | Privacy Notice Link |
Software we use
The software providers that we use are compliant under the General Data Protection Regulation Act 2016 and Data Protection Act 2018
Transfer of personal data
No data is transferred overseas as part of this service.
Automated decision making
The Council Tax and Business Rates departments do not use automated decision making in respect of your personal data.
Retention period
We process your personal data for the above purposes for no longer than necessary and in accordance with current legislation and the Councils Retention Schedule.
Only in exceptional circumstances will we hold your information for longer, for example a pending court case. All information will be held securely and disposed of confidentially.
Anonymising your data
Your personal information may be converted into statistical or aggregated data that ensures that you cannot be identified from it.
Anonymised data means it cannot be linked back to you as an individual and may be used to conduct research and analysis. This includes the preparations of statistics for use in our reports.
Your rights
Your rights are set out in the Data Protection legislation and include:
- the right to access your personal information, to request rectification or erasure of certain personal
- information and to object to processing in certain circumstances
- the right to withdraw any consent you may have given to process your personal information
- the right to complain to the Information Commissioner if you feel we are processing your personal information unlawfully
- the right to restrict processing activity in certain circumstances
- the right to object to certain types of processing activity
Further information
You can get more information about these rights in the Council’s Privacy Policy.
If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact our Information Governance team on informationgovernance@wealden.gov.uk in writing or by completing our online form.
If you are dissatisfied with how we have used your personal data, you have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at casework@ico.org.uk.