Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction privacy notice - Privacy notices

As part of the Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction application process, Herefordshire Council will collect personal data about you and your family.

This information will include:

• Details about you, such as your address, telephone number, email address, National Insurance number, date of birth, household composition and income details
• Other relevant information needed to process your claim such as your landlord details

We will use this data to process your claim and may check some of the information with other sources to ensure this data is accurate.

All personal data held, is processed in accordance with data protection law. The data controller for the information outlined in this privacy notice is Herefordshire Council.

Hoople Ltd is the data processor who will process your information on behalf of Herefordshire Council.

We will collect information about you (where applicable) to:

• Process your claim for Housing Benefit and/or Council Tax Reduction
• To allow the council to communicate and provide services appropriate to your needs, for example Free School Meals
• Where the processing is necessary to comply with legal obligations, for example the prevention and/or detection of crime including fraud
• Protect public funds

The legal basis for processing the data is:

• Your consent, which you can withdraw at any time by notifying us. Please be advised that where consent is withdrawn your application for Housing Benefit and/or Council Tax Reduction will no longer be able to be processed. Consent is unable to be withdrawn in cases for the prevention of crime
• Our legal obligation under the following legislation:
• Social Security Administration Act
  • Housing Benefit Regulations
  • Local Government Finance Act
• The prevention/detection of crime, including false representation in accordance with the Fraud Act

To process your claim we share information under our legal obligations and with partner organisations, including:

• Hoople Ltd for purposes of processing the claims
• Government departments in connection to a welfare benefit claim
• The Department for Work and Pensions
• On occasions, your information may be accessed by contracted IT support organisations in the delivery of IT support for both the IT infrastructure and associated systems, for the processes detailed in this privacy notice. Access by IT support will only be for such reasons as fixing any technical issues with software, and any viewing of data will be incidental to this

Subject to a legal gateway, your information may also be shared for the prevention of fraud and criminal activity with (list not exhaustive):

• The police
• Health and social care organisations

We will not normally share your information with organisations other than our partner organisations without your consent. However, there may be certain circumstances where we would share without consent, such as where we are required to do so by law, to safeguard public safety, and in risk of harm or emergency situations. We will only share the minimum information for the purpose, on a need to know basis and with appropriate individuals.

We will only keep your information for the minimum period necessary. The information outlined in this privacy notice will be kept after all action on your claim has finished and the period required by the council for legal and audit purposes has passed. All information will be held securely and destroyed under confidential conditions.

You have a number of rights under data protection law, including the right to request your information and to request that the information is amended or erased if incorrect.

To request your records, you will need to put your request in writing and provide proof of identification to the Information Governance Team, Herefordshire Council, Plough Lane, Hereford HR4 0LE or via email informationgovernance@herefordshire.gov.uk

You also have a right to make a complaint about our handling of your personal data to the Information Commissioner's Office.

If you have any questions or concerns about how your information is used, please contact the Revenues and Benefits team, email revsandbenssupport@herefordshire.gov.uk in the first instance.

You can also contact the Data Protection Officer, Herefordshire Council, Plough Lane, Hereford HR4 0LE, email informationgovernance@herefordshire.gov.uk

More information about data protection and how it applies to you can be found on the Information Commissioner's Office website.

• Housing Benefit page
• Council Tax Reduction page