Why we are collecting your data?
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 application for a financial loan or financial assistance. This includes disabled persons relocation assistance, emergency works assistance and other housing assistance as detailed in our Private Housing Financial Assistance Policy. We will only collect the personal data from you we need in order to make this assessment, to provide this service to you and to contact you in relation to the service you have received.
What is the legal basis for processing your personal data?
We collect and use your personal data as a task carried out in the public interest in line with the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996, under the Regulatory Reform (Housing Assistance)(England and Wales) 2002. We will not be able to assess and process your application for a financial loan or financial assistance without the personal data we collect from you.
Who will your information be shared with?
We share your personal data internally for our own data matching exercise, using names, addresses and dates of birth. This helps us to ensure the personal data we hold across the Council is accurate and up to date and identify customers by a single customer record.
We may share your personal data with our selected partner who provides financial loans and assistance on our behalf. Before we do so we ensure that we have put in place adequate measures to protect your personal data. We will only share your personal data with contractors to carry out works with your consent.
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 do so only where we are required to do so by law, to protect an individual from harm or once we have obtained your explicit consent.
Your information may be anonymised into statistical or aggregated data in such a way as to ensure that you are not identified or identified from it. This information might be used to conduct research and analysis, including to prepare statistical research and reports.
We will not:
- Use your personal data for marketing purposes without your prior explicit consent.
- Store or send your personal data to a country outside the European Economic Area (EEA).
- Make decisions about you based on automated processing of your personal data.
How long will we hold your data for?
We are required to keep all records relating to any financial loans or financial assistance for six years from the date of the last payment of the loan or assistance grant. Where the loan or assistance grant contains a repayment conditions, we will keep records for six years following the final repayment. We will only keep your personal data longer if we are required to do so by law.
Your rights
The General Data Protection Regulation gives you a number of rights in
relation to your personal data:
- Right to access a copy of your personal data
- Right to have your personal data corrected
- Right to have your personal data deleted (“right to be forgotten”)
- Right to restrict how we use your personal data
- Right to ask us to transfer your personal data to another service provider
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.
Identity of Data Protection Officer
If you have any questions or concerns about how your personal data is handled, you can contact our Data Protection Officer (DPO), Kristina ShawHamilton, at dataprotection@wealden.gov.uk.