Privacy Notice - Benefits
The Council will only process your information where is it lawful to do so. The lawful basis for processing your information for Housing Benefit and/or Council Tax Support is on the basis that processing is necessary for compliance with The Housing Benefit Regulations 2006 and the Council Tax Reduction Schemes (Prescribed Requirements) (England) Regulations 2012. The categories of information the Council shall process include the following: your name, address, email, telephone number, age, National Insurance number, health information, financial information including details of all income and capital, child care costs, name of employer or pension provider and details of third parties authorised to act on your behalf. The Council will also process the information detailed above (where relevant) relating to all members of your household including your partner, children and anyone else living with you. For Housing Benefit the Council will also process information relating to your property including your landlord, tenancy and rent details.
Where the processing of information is on the basis of a statutory requirement and you fail to provide personal information or refuse to provide information to the Council, you may be committing a criminal offence and the Council may be unable to provide you with the services or assistance you require. The Council may use automated decision making when processing your data. This may occur in circumstances where the Council receives electronic updates from third parties relating to changes in welfare benefits, Tax Credits and earnings.
The Council may also use your information for its functions under the Housing Act 2004. This use is expressly permitted by legislation (Section 237 of the Housing Act 2004). The Council has contracted with Building Research Establishment Limited to process data as part of its functions to review housing conditions in its area, and details of BRE’s privacy policy and notice are available at:
www.bregroup.com/privacy-policy
The Council may pass information to other agencies or organisations such as Department for Work and Pensions and HM Revenues and Customs, as allowed by the law. The Council may check information you have provided, or information about you that someone else has provided, with other information held. The Council may also get information about you from certain third parties, or give information to them to: make sure the information is accurate; prevent or detect crime; and protect public funds. These third parties include government departments, local authorities and private sector companies such as banks and organisations that may lend you money. The Council will not give information about you to anyone else, or use information about you for other purposes, unless the Law allows this.
The personal information shall be stored for as long as the Council is required to maintain Council Tax records that are linked to the 1993 Council Tax bands. The personal information for Housing Benefit claims without any linked Council Tax records shall be stored for a period of 7 years from the closure date of your claim. You have a legal right to request from the Council access to and rectification of personal data. The Council will not transfer your personal information outside of the European Economic Area (EEA).
Data is held securely on both our live and duplicate database; this allows us to fix, upgrade and test on our duplicate database without risk of damage to data on our live database. Both databases are subject to identical security controls.
Test Valley Borough Council is the Data Controller for the purposes of data protection legislation. The Data Protection Officer is Mrs Karen Dunn In the event that you wish to complain or contact the Council regarding any aspects of how your information is handled please direct your complaints or queries to: The Data Protection Officer by email at DPO@testvalley.gov.uk, or by post at Beech Hurst, Weyhill Road, Andover, Hampshire, SP10 3AJ. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner https://ico.org.uk/