Privacy Notice - Discretionary Housing Payments
The Council will only process your information where is it lawful to do so. The lawful basis for processing your information for Discretionary Housing Payments is on the basis that processing is necessary for compliance with the Discretionary Financial Assistance Regulations 2001 (S1 001/1167) and the Welfare Reform Act 2012 (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2013. 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, household expenses, details of any outstanding debts and names of Companies you owe money to 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. The Council will also process information relating to your property including your landlord, tenancy and rent details, history of previous rent payments and rent arrears.
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 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 for Discretionary Housing Payments linked to Housing Benefit 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 Discretionary Housing Payments for Universal Credit cases and Housing Benefit cases without any linked Council Tax records shall be stored for a period of 7 years from the closure date of your claim. Your claim form for Discretionary Housing Payments and any documents supplied in respect of this claim shall be stored for a period of 7 years. 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/