Housing options team privacy notice

Your Personal Information and how we use it

Sunderland City Council's Housing Options Team needs to collect information about you to help us provide you with the best possible service, and to ensure your wellbeing.

We will only use information collected lawfully in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and future UK Data Protection legislation.

We will not use any information we hold about you for any purpose other than that for which it was collected, unless we have obtained your consent beforehand.

What information do we collect?

We collect information about you and your housing needs and any support needs. This enables us to provide the appropriate housing options suitable for your needs and to ensure appropriate referrals are in place to support you. This information may be recorded in writing, or electronically on a computer, or a mixture of both.

The type of information we will collect:

Personal information (such as name and address, next of kin)
Your assessed care and support needs
Health conditions
Religious or similar beliefs
Racial or ethnic origin
Information that you wish to share with us about your life and housing aspirations to help us provide you with appropriate advice and options
Financial information such as income and expenditure and proof of this

How is the information we collect used to help you?

The information we collect may be used to help you in the following ways:

Housing professionals need accurate information about you to assess your needs, and to plan and deliver the appropriate housing options
To assess the type of property you require
To place appropriate referrals to other agencies to assist with other support needs
To safeguard you and your family
To ensure any concerns can be properly investigated if you are unhappy with the care you have received

Do we share information about you with anyone?

There are times when it will be appropriate for us to share relevant information with other agencies to help us work together for your benefit. We may share your information with the following main partners, and they may share it with us to support your care:

The type of information we will collect:

Housing Association
Private Landlords
Supported Housing Providers / Hostel Providers
Health Professionals
Police / Probation

We do not share information about you with anyone without your consent unless the law requires or allows us to do so. We will always seek your positive consent to share information if there is no legal basis to share.

In all cases where we must pass on information, we will only share the minimum amount of information required and will use the most secure method to transfer; wherever possible data will be pseudonymised (i.e. does not identify you personally) or encrypted.

The lawful basis on which we use this information

We need to collect and use your personal data in order to comply with the relevant legislation for providing health and social care to you. This legislation includes the:

Housing Act 1977 & 1996
Homelessness Act 2002
Homelessness Reduction Act 2017
Equality Act 2010

Our lawful basis for processing is therefore as we have a statutory obligation as defined by Article 6(1)(c) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Some of the information we need to hold is classed as special category information - primarily ethnicity, gender and any health conditions. Our lawful basis for processing this data is provided by Article 9(2)(b) of GDPR - carrying out our obligations in the field of social security and social protection law..

How we look after your information

All information is held securely with physical, organisational and electronic access controls to ensure it is secure both at rest and when in transit.

How long we will look after your information

We will keep information in line with Sunderland City Council's Retention Schedule for the Housing Options Team, and we will only keep it as long as we need it. When we no longer need your information it will be destroyed securely by deletion of electronic records and shredding of paper files.

Requesting access to your personal data

You can find out if we hold any personal information about you by making a 'subject access request' under the General Data Protection Regulation.

In addition, you have the right to request the rectification or erasure of your personal data, and to object to, or request restriction of, processing your data.

If you have any concern about the way we are collecting or using your personal information, we request that you raise your concern with us in the first instance.

Alternatively, you can contact the Information Commissioner's Office at

https://ico.org.uk/concerns/