Housing management – privacy notice

Portsmouth City Council is a registered Data Controller (Registration Number Z5578313) Portsmouth City Council tries to meet the highest standards when collecting and using personal information in accordance with data protection law. This privacy notice tells you about how Portsmouth City Council collects and uses personal information

Portsmouth City Council collects the names, addresses, dates of birth and contact information in the form of telephone numbers and email addresses from you as a customer or tenants. We may also collect other personal information about your family, your mental and physical health, financial circumstances and housing and social care needs when relevant. We keep copies of letters and records of telephone calls along with information we receive about you from other people, for example your doctor. We also keep details of your next of kin, people you wish us to contact and details of any payments made in connection with your tenancy

Portsmouth City Council uses personal information to:

• Deliver services
• Manage tenancies
• Facilitate both planned and response repairs to our properties and buildings
• Offer support
• Manage licences
• Assist in service development
• Enable payments for services

Portsmouth City Council uses personal information to:

• Ensure that we can contact you when we need to. This means that we can make you aware of any changes to things like your tenancy agreement.
• Contact you in the case of a repair affecting the property you live in.
• Allow you to pay for services via Direct Debit.
• Let you know if the terms of a licence you hold with us is changing, for example if the charges for a parking space you rent from Portsmouth City Council are being updated
• Help you to access services relating to Property and Housing such as Housing Options and Money Advice

Portsmouth City Council ensures that your personal data is kept secure through the use of technical security measures for all our IT systems. We ensure that only employees who should have access to personal data can do so and this is managed through comprehensive training, regular checks and validation. Anyone that processes personal data on our behalf, such as repairs contractors, are governed by specific contracts to ensure that they do so securely and only for the purposes set out by Portsmouth City Council.

Records will not be kept for longer than necessary. Full information regarding retention periods for the different types of data can be found on our corporate retention schedule.

You have the right to know if Portsmouth City Council holds any personal information relating to you. You can do this by making a ‘Subject Access Request’ using the information in the ‘How to contact us’ section or by going to the Freedom of Information page.

You will usually be entitled to see all of the data held about you but may not be entitled to see confidential information about other people.

CCTV images that are stored and catalogued may be accessed by individuals by following the procedure above to make a ‘Subject Access Request’. Portsmouth City Council may not record CCTV at all locations with CCTV signage and not all CCTV cameras will be operational at all hours of the week. Individuals may not be able to see visual images that contain other identifiable individuals or are considered confidential under law e.g. if they are required for the prevention or identification of a crime.

There may be times when we need to share your information with other people. We will only do this if you have given your consent or where the law allows or requires us to. This could be in an emergency where there is a safeguarding concern or life threatening situation or for the purposes of preventing or detecting crime or fraud or apprehending and prosecuting offenders where we have a statutory duty to do so.

We will only share appropriate information about you with your family or carers and usually only where you have given specific permission to do so. We may withhold information where it places any individual at risk.

We will share personal data with other organisations such as contractors to enable them to carry out repairs on our behalf, with other organisations and businesses such as other housing providers, the Police and health care providers to allow us to assist you with a housing need or to offer you appropriate support within your tenancy.

We will only share with each person or organisation the details they need in order to provide their services or support to you or perform their statutory duty.

If you have a complaint or query about how we collect and use personal information, if you would like a change to be made to your record or want to object to processing of your information, please contact us using the information in the ‘How to contact us’ section below.

If you would like to make a complaint or are not satisfied with the responses you have received from us after making a request, please contact:

Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

Tel: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745 (if you prefer to use a national rate number).

This privacy notice was last updated on 24 January 2018.

If you want to request details of our privacy policy and how we collect and use personal information, you can contact:

Corporate Information Governance Officer,
Customer, Community & Democratic Service,
Portsmouth City Council
Civic offices,
Portsmouth,
PO1 2AL

Email: foi@portsmouthcc.gov.uk

Telephone: 023 9282 2251