Privacy notices

Croydon’s Housing Renewal Service is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

We are responsible for providing a range of services designed to help our residents remain in their own homes and keep their independence including hospital discharge, gardening, reablement and handyperson support for tenants and homeowners. We also work to tackle the problem of empty homes and this wasted resource. We provide home investment loans and disabled facilities grants to assist with housing repairs and adaptations for persons with disabilities.

This privacy notice explains how we use you information and how we protect your privacy in compliance with our legal obligations under the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2018. This notice applies to any activity involving our use of your personal data, for example, collecting, storing, sharing, and destroying.

What information we collect

We collect a range of information including some or all of the following:

• names, dates of birth, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses
• you and your family’s legal status
• who else lives with you along with their details (eg partner, children and other adults).
• information about your current and previous housing circumstances to assess  applications for financial assistance
• your financial records (eg allowances and benefits, savings and investments, income and capital)
• your contact details or those of your relatives or advocate so we can communicate with you, and keep you informed about other services we offer which may be useful to you
• property ownership, tenancy or contract information (if you are a freeholder or leaseholder)
• details of your landlord and any other information required to process an application under our service
• health and disability information to inform decisions regarding any adaptations you may need to your home and to take into account any reasonable requirements to ensure our services are accessible and appropriately targeted
• recordings of your telephone calls to us, as calls to our contact centre are recorded for training and monitoring purposes so we can ensure we are delivering a good service. These are held in line with our corporate retention policy before being erased
• your image on our CCTV systems if you visit an estate, office or community facility which is covered by this facility; any footage is held in line with our corporate retention policy before being erased; this data may be shared with the police in relation to the prevention or detection of crime or fraud

Generally, the information we hold about you will have been provided by you via our application or enquiry forms or when we communicate with you. We may also hold information provided by third parties where this is relevant to your housing circumstances (eg from social workers and health professionals, doctors and occupational therapists).

Why we collect your information

We use your data to:

• make decisions relating to the provision of grant and loan assistance and to provide housing renewal services to the residents, landlords and tenants of the borough
• enable us to carry out our statutory duties eg
  • processing Disabled Facilities Grant applications
  • protecting public funds
  • recovering debt
  • preventing or detecting crime/fraud
  • law enforcement, criminal prosecutions and court proceedings
  • regulation and licensing
• produce statistics and reports to research and plan new services; statistics are used in such a way that individuals or families cannot be identified from them
• monitor, evaluate and review the quality of our services
• comply with government department research and statistical returns
• account for our decisions and investigate complaints
• inform targeted support and homelessness services to adults, young people and families who are most in need and at risk of harm or abuse

Who we share information with

We may share information about you to third parties where permitted or required by law to do so for all lawful purposes as specified in this notice:

• other Croydon Council teams so they can carry out their statutory roles and support our service (eg social services, complaints, business intelligence, corporate finance, legal services, IT services, quality assurance)
• third party / service delivery partners who deliver these services on our behalf
• Croydon’s multi-agency safeguarding hub (MASH)
• Croydon’s multi-agency risk assessment conference (MARAC) that carries out safety planning for high-risk victims of domestic abuse. It brings together the police, independent domestic violence advisers, children’s social services, health, social landlords and other relevant agencies
• emergency services (eg treatment centres, hospitals in their function of providing in patient care)
• government departments eg Department for Work and Pensions, HM Revenue and Customs, Home Office
• other local housing authorities
• banks or organisations that lend money
• social housing providers
• private rental landlords and/or housing companies
• estate agents and/or property management companies
• credit reference agencies
• police and fraud prevention agencies
• HM Courts and Tribunals System
• solicitors and other advocates
• your lawyer or representative (if you have instructed one)

Staff in each area will only access the personal information that is essential to carry out their work and statutory functions but may share data between the respective teams where this is necessary to provide you with services.

All organisations we pass your information to will have an information-sharing agreement with us to ensure they meet the standards of the GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, and will be covered by a legal basis allowing them to collect, use and share your personal information.

The lawful basis on which we use this information

The legal bases for processing your personal information are:

• compliance with our legal obligations
• tasks carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority
• contract for the supply of services
• consent

Collecting this information

Whilst the majority of information provided to us is mandatory due to compliance with a legal obligation, some of it is provided to us on a voluntary basis. To comply with the GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, we will inform you whether you are required by law to provide certain information to us; if you do have a choice to provide information that is not mandatory, your explicit consent will be requested. You do have the right to withdraw your consent if this is applicable to processing your data. If this is the case, we will let you know.

We will only ask for personal information that is necessary to enable us to deliver our services in compliance with our legal duties under, including but not limited to, relevant health and safety regulations, Housing Acts 1985, 1988, 1996, and 2004, the Homelessness Act 2002, Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, Housing and Planning Act 2016, Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, Children Acts 1989 and 2004, Equality Act 2010, Human Rights Act 1998 and any associated regulations, statutory guidance and codes of guidance.

Storing this information

Personal data will not be retained for longer than necessary in relation to the purposes for which they were collected. There is usually a legal reason for keeping your personal information for a set period of time – this ranges from months for some records to decades for more sensitive records.

For example, if you receive a home investment loan from the council, we will hold information about you for the duration of the loan, until the loan sum is repaid in full. If you repay the loan, we will usually keep records about your application for 12 months after repayment in case of queries and they will then be destroyed securely.

If you would like to know more about how we store your data, please contact hsg-stayingput@croydon.gov.uk.

Providing us with accurate information

It is very important that you provide us with accurate information to enable us to process your application more quickly. If any of your details have changed, or change in the future, please inform us as soon as possible so that we can update your records.

If false or inaccurate information is provided and fraud is identified, details will be passed to fraud prevention agencies. Law enforcement agencies may access and use this information.

Requesting access to your personal data

Under GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, you have the right to request access to information that we hold about you. To make a request for your personal information, contact the Council’s Information Management Team at SAR@croydon.gov.uk.

Further information

The GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 gives you a number of rights to control what personal information is used by us and how it is used by us. Information about your data rights is listed in the Council’s corporate privacy notice.

If you have any questions or concerns about the way we collect, store or use your personal information, please contact in the first instance hsg-stayingput@croydon.gov.uk 

For advice about data protection issues, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at www.ico.org.uk .

We reserve the right to amend this privacy notice at any time and will keep it under review. If we do make any changes, we will post the current version to our website at this address.

Last updated: May 2018