Advance Northumberland Homes: Privacy Notice

How we handle your information

Everyone working for Advance Northumberland (Housing) Limited (Advance Northumberland Homes from hereon in) has a legal duty to keep and process information about you in accordance with the law. This document aims to explain why we ask for your personal information, how that information will be used and how you can access your records.

Why is information recorded about me?

We use information about Advance Northumberland Homes tenants to enable us to provide you with houses and apartments to rent and carry out specific building maintenance and repairs, for which we are responsible. We keep records about Advance Northumberland Homes tenants that are written down (manual records), and ones kept on a computer (electronic records) and in our finance database.

These records may include:

• Basic details about you, for example your name, any previous names, your current address, your telephone number/s and email address.
• Your gender, your nationality and your date of birth.
• Your employment status.
• Your income.
• Your bank details.
• Unique identifiers, such as your National Insurance Number.
• Copies of your Advance tenancy agreements, current and historic.
• Details of your previous addresses and landlords.
• Contact we have had with you, for example, meetings with Advance staff and copies of correspondence.
• Notes and reports about your relevant circumstances, including any criminal convictions.

What is the information used for?

We use your information to process applications and create tenancy agreements. It is also used to ensure we provide you with the services you require from Advance Northumberland Homes. It is important the information you provide is accurate and up-to-date as this will help ensure our staff are able to provide you with the right help, advice or support you need.

If you do not want to provide us with information you should not use our services. Without your information we would not be able to create your tenancy agreement, which means you would have no legal basis to occupy a property. We would also be unable to generate correct rent charges or receive your payments.

How long is the information used for?

In order to provide you with this service, we rely on the legal basis of Article 6(1)(b) of the General Data Protection Regulations which state processing is necessary for the performance of a contract with the data subject or to take steps to enter into a contract. We do also ask for consent for some

information we request from you at the application stage.  Your details will be kept for the duration of your tenancy agreement and then archived as per our Record Retention Policy. Processing is kept to a minimum and will only be processed in accordance with the law.

Sharing your information

When other parties are involved in the tenancy application process, or suppliers are involved in the delivery of your services with Advance Northumberland Homes, for example responding to repairs and maintenance issues, we may need to share details about you with our Approved Contractors to enable us to work together for your benefit. Information will only be shared with third parties if they have genuine and lawful need for it.

Occasions when your information needs to be disclosed(shared) include:

• To verify income status declared on a tenancy application form where no payslip or Contract of Employment is available.
• To verify previous addresses declared on a tenancy application form with former landlords, or via the National Landlord’s Association
• To participate in the Safer Estates initiatives with the local police force.
• Where you have stated you are in receipt of support from a third-party agency as part of your application we may contact them to validate this.
• To confirm dates of occupation for Council Tax and utility purposes.
• To respond to reactive repair requests at your home (if you report one).
• To provide an out of hours emergency repairs service (if you contact us out of hours).
• To recover outstanding rent payments.
• Where the health and safety of others is at risk.
• When the law requires us to pass on information under special circumstances.

Anyone who receives information from us has a legal duty to keep it confidential

We are required by law to report certain information to appropriate authorities, for example:

• Where a formal court order has been issued.
• Where we encounter infectious diseases which maybe a public health concern.

Partner organisations who receive information about you

Advance Northumberland Homes outsource most, though not all, reactive and planned repair jobs. We maintain a list of Approved Contractors to allocate orders to. Our Approved Contractors list is published on our website and available to view at anytime, or this information can be requested from our Head Office (seethe ‘further information’ section below for our contact details). In the event you report a repair at your property, your name, address and contact details would be issued to an Approved Contractor. Note however, that on some occasions, the person attending to your repair could be an Advance member of staff.

Advance Northumberland Homes also outsource our out of hours emergency repair telephone service. A third party answers our telephones outside of our business hours and would be responsible for collecting your name, address and contact details. They too would pass on the details to an Approved Contractor.

Information relating to occupation dates could be confirmed to a Local Authority responsible for Council Tax, or a utility company where up to date information has not been provided by the occupier.

Data could be shared for the purpose of economic and or regeneration related research carried out by our shareholder (Northumberland County Council). Data would be for their internal use only, and no identifiable information would be placed in the public domain.

Data will typically be stored and processed within the European Economic Area(EEA) and will not be shared with overseas recipients. However, some of the services we use, for example the National Landlord Association services, will mean that your data may be transferred to and stored at, a destination outside the EEA. In such cases the provider must operate under the EU Binding Corporate Rules arrangement for data protection.

Can I see my records?

The General Data Protection Regulation allows you to find out what information is held about you, on paper and computer records. This is known as ‘right of subject access’ and applies to your Advance Northumberland Homes records, along with all other personal information we hold.

If you wish to see a copy of your records you should submit a Subject Access Request directly to The Data Protection Officer at Wansbeck Workspace, Rotary Parkway, Ashington, Northumberland, NE63 8QZ or by emailing dpo@advancenorthumberland.co.uk or by calling 01670 528400. You are entitled to receive a copy of your records free of charge, within a month. In certain circumstances access to your records may be limited, for example, if the records you have asked for contain information relating to another person.

Do I have Other Rights?

Data Protection laws gives you the right:

• To be informed why, where and how we use your information.
• To ask for access to your information.
• To ask for information to be corrected if inaccurate or incomplete.
• To ask for your information to be deleted or removed where there is no need for us to continue processing it.
• To ask us to restrict the use of your information.
• To ask us to copy or transfer your information from one IT system to another in a safe and secure way, without impacting the quality of the information.
• To object to how your information is used.
• To challenge any decisions made without human intervention(automated decision making).
• To lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office whose contact details

are below.

• If our processing is based upon your consent, to withdraw your consent.

Further information

If you would like to know more about how we use your information, or if for any reason you do not wish to have your information used in any of the ways described in this leaflet, please tell us. Please contact the Data Protection Officer on 01670 528400 or at email address dpo@advancenorthumberland.co.uk

Details of the Information Commissioner can be found at: https://ico.org.uk/