PSH Housing Regulation, HMO Licensing and Mobile Homes privacy notice

Portsmouth City Council is a registered Data Controller (Registration Number Z5578313). Portsmouth City Council aims 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.

The Private Sector Housing Team collects the names, images, addresses, dates of birth and contact information in the form of telephone numbers and email addresses from you as a customer or contractors. We keep copies of letters, emails and records of telephone calls along with information we receive about you from other organisations where the law permits, for example other local authorities, departments within the council, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Police, and other government agencies.

We may also collect other personal information about your family, next of kin, power of attorney, your mental and physical health, financial circumstances and housing and social care needs when relevant. We may also record copies of official identification such as passports and driving licences when required to.

In some circumstances officers may utilise body worn cameras and store the information recorded. Officers may also collect information obtained through tracing agents and/or genealogist firms.

Portsmouth City Council uses personal information to:

• Carry out our regulatory functions
• Facilitate and oversee works in privately rented properties, owner- occupied properties and empty properties across the city
• Assist in Service development
• Offer support and access to services
• Enable the recovery of costs for works in privately owned or rented properties
• Manage and monitor compliance with property licences
• Encourage community engagement to understand any local issues and work with the community to find a solution
• Ensure satisfactory student accommodation across the city
• For the purposes of detecting and preventing crime
• Take enforcement action when required
• Facilitate our management and regulation of mobile home sites
• Address issues surrounding empty properties in the city
• Regulate mid- and high-rise buildings in the city

Portsmouth City Council uses personal information to:

• Deliver the functions of our service
• Ensure that we can contact you when it is necessary to do so
• Allow you to pay for services when you need to do so
• Take appropriate enforcement action when required
• Let you know if the terms of a license or agreement that you hold with us is changing, including a change to the amount that you need to pay
• To provide information to third parties as required and permitted by legislation, e.g. Public Register for HMO licences
• Work with contractors, stakeholders or other partners in the delivery of our service
• Carry out regulatory activity to address non-compliance of legal requirements
• Enable us to conduct investigations in line with our enforcement practices

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 website.

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 our Freedom of Information webpage.

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 and Body Worn Camera 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 either given your explicit 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 share personal data with other organisations such as mortgage providers, interested parties as prescribed in law, the Police and other Local Authorities only where the law allows us to do so.

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 reviewed on 29 August 2025.

If you want to request details of our Corporate Privacy Policy please visit our Portsmouth City Council Website. If you require further information about how we and how we collect and use personal information, you can contact:

Data Protection Officer,
Customer, Community & Democratic Service, Portsmouth City Council
Civic offices, Portsmouth, PO1 2AL

Email: Dataprotection@portsmouthcc.gov.uk

Telephone: 023 9282 2251