How Seaside Homes uses your personal information
This privacy notice tells you what to expect when Seaside Homes collects and stores personal and special category information. It applies to information we collect about:
Tenants and other residents who live in our properties
During your tenancy we may collect and process information about you and members of your household such as:
- Full Name
- Address
- Contact Details including landline telephone number, mobile number and email address
We may also collect and process “special categories” of more sensitive information such as:
- Race
- National or Ethnic Origin
- Gender
- Healthcare Information
We will only use your personal data in accordance with data protection legislation, primarily in order to perform our obligations as landlord under your tenancy agreement, to comply with other legal obligations and to pursue the legitimate interests of Seaside Homes, to ensure the effective management of your tenancy and to provide you with support services. Use of your data may be necessary for example in order to:
- Manage your tenancy and the Seaside Homes property it relates to
- Monitor compliance with the terms of your tenancy or service agreement
- Enable the delivery of support to you or any member of your household
- Conduct surveys in order to monitor and improve our services
- Monitor Equality and Diversity
- Provide information about our performance and services through newsletters
We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
We may also collect or be provided with information about you from third parties such as Brighton & Hove City Council, other local authorities and statutory agencies which may include information about criminal convictions or investigations, your physical or mental health, or disability status, where this is necessary to prevent or detect unlawful acts, enable us to carry out our obligations under social protection law, for reasons of substantial public interest, or to protect your vital interests or those of another person.
We may also use information about your race or national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, or your sexual orientation, to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting.
We do not use any form of automated decision-making in relation to your personal data.
How Seaside Homes stores your personal information
We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to protect your information, we have put in place physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information that we collect.
The transmission of information via the internet or email is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal data transmitted to our site; any such transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your personal data, we will use strict managerial procedures and security features to prevent unauthorised access.
Who Seaside Homes might share your personal information with?
We may need to share personal information with third parties. We do this to achieve the purposes as set out in the links above.
We also share information:
- To fulfil our obligations as a landlord and to ensure that Brighton & Hove City Council is able to effectively perform its functions as managing agent.
- For detecting possible fraud (e.g. as part of the National Fraud Initiative)
- To deal with rent arrears (e.g. tracing and/or debt collection agencies)
- To deal with unpaid bills, e.g. utility or council tax bills – we may need to pass on your forwarding address to utilities companies and local authorities.
- To help us communicate with you (e.g. we sometimes use external printers, agencies and translators etc)
- To communicate with the Department for Work and Pensions, the Job Centre Plus, local authorities and other agencies and organisations to support you and the management of your benefits and in the provision of support to you
- To contact your GP to assist you with sickness benefits.
As part of the government’s reform of welfare benefits, they’ve introduced new regulations on information sharing. This means we can now share limited information about our residents and their properties with local authorities. For example; name, address, age and number of bedrooms per property.
The new regulations will help us identify and support those who may be affected by welfare reform.
We may also disclose your personal details, if required to do so, by law or any Government body.
Seaside Homes contracts external companies to manage certain areas of our business, to fulfil our obligations as a landlord.
We share limited personal information of our residents with external contractors, such as name, address and telephone number.
Examples include:
- Repairs and maintenance contractors
- Out of hours call centre service
- Health and safety and compliance checks (e.g. gas servicing, lifts, asbestos, legionella)
We’ll only share the minimum information necessary for the contractor to carry out their services on behalf of Seaside Homes. If you have any concerns about a company operating on behalf of Seaside Homes, or information that’s been shared with an external company, please contact us using the details below.
We’ll never sell personal information to a third party.
Fraud detection
We may use data disclosed to us for the purpose of preventing and detecting fraud.
Any personal data disclosed may be used for the purpose of preventing and detecting fraud. This includes information provided on the Seaside Homes website or in any other way provided to us, whether it was collected on-line or not.
The data collected may be used for the purpose of data matching and for further investigations. This involves comparing the data we hold on you with that held by third parties solely for the purpose of detecting and preventing fraud. We might also use your data to further investigate fraud that we think might have been committed.
This involves checking with various third parties, such as the Land Registry, banks, schools and utility companies and where appropriate, making a report to the police.
How long does Seaside Homes keep information?
We will only keep your personal data for as long as we need it to fulfil the purposes we collected it for. We will usually keep information relating to a residential tenancy for 6 years after the termination of the tenancy, however, we may need to keep certain information for a longer period if required by law. We have a document retention policy which sets out how long we keep different types of information for. We follow legal requirements and best practice.
If you would like to view a copy of this policy please contact us as follows:
Email: info@seaside-homes.org.uk
Telephone: 01273 732061
Access to your personal Information
You have a legal right to see what personal information we hold about you. This is called a Subject Access Request. There is usually no charge made for a Subject Access Request, but we do require two forms of identification, including at least one photographic, before we can process any such request.
By law we have a maximum of one month to deliver the information from the date on which we receive the Subject Access Request.
We’ve a Subject Access Request form which provides further information and will help you to submit your request. For a copy of our Subject Access Request form please contact us on:
Email: info@seaside-homes.org.uk
Telephone: 01273 732061.
Your right to certain information may be restricted. For example, information not related to a third party or information relating to a police investigation.
You also have the right:
- to request that the information we hold about you is corrected, if it is inaccurate or incomplete
- to request that your personal information is deleted or removed, where there is no good reason for us to keep it
- to object to processing of your personal information
- to request that we restrict our use of your personal information (i.e. permitting its storage but nothing further)
- to request that we transfer your personal information to another data controller.
You should be aware however that if you object to us processing your personal information, this may affect the services we are able to provide you under your tenancy agreement. If this is likely to be the case, we will advise you at the time we receive your objection.
In the limited circumstances where we require your consent to process your personal data for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time.
