Housing Options and Support Privacy Notice

When you contact Housing Options and Support we collect and use your personal data. We may also collect some special category information. A further explanation of this can be found in the Council’s main Privacy Notice 

We need this information to process things like:

• Assessing your housing and housing support needs
• Arranging to meet and manage any housing and support needs;
• Checking the quality of the services you receive;
• Investigating if we have concerns about your safety or you are reporting concerns about another person’s safety;
• Looking into complaints you have about your services;
• Detecting and preventing fraud or crime; and
• Helping with service delivery and planning, for example training of staff.

The council currently participates in a project with its West Midlands Combined Authority partners, called Housing First.

Housing First is a project that supports homeless people with high needs and histories of entrenched or repeat homelessness to live in their own homes. The philosophy is to provide a stable independent home and intensive personalised support. The project is currently funded by the Government via the West Midlands Combined Authority. The success of the project is being evaluated by Government appointed researchers (the research company is called ICF).

To evaluate the project, the following information will be shared with ICF in their capacity as service providers to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). The information will only be shared with informed consent of the individual:

• Name
• Telephone number
• Email
• Address details

Here you can find more information about the Housing First projects.

Please see the research companies (ICF) Privacy Notice

We will use this personal and special category data to comply with our legal obligations and duties, and where it is necessary to protect individuals from harm or injury.

The legal basis under General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Article 6 (1) are:

• (c) processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject; and
• (e) processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller.
• Additionally in some cases (a) the data subject has given consent to the processing and
• (d) processing is necessary in order to protect the vital interests of the data subject or of another natural person.

The legal basis under GDPR Article 9 (2) for special category data are:

• (c) processing is necessary to protect the vital interests of the data subject or of another natural person where the data subject is physically or legally incapable of giving consent;
• (g) processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest, on the basis of Union or Member State law which shall be proportionate to the aim pursued, respect the essence of the right to data protection and provide for suitable and specific measures to safeguard the fundamental rights and the interests of the data subject;
• and in some cases (a) the data subject has given explicit consent to the processing of those personal data for one or more specified purposes.

To legally share data for research, local authorities and MHCLG will rely on the Digital Economy Act 2017.

The collection of personal information by MHCLG for the Housing First project is compliant with data protection legislation.

The council will collect your personal data under the public task basis (in this case to provide housing services) and agree to share this data with MHCLG under the public task basis (in this case to reduce homelessness).

MHCLG will rely on the Lawful Bases specified above for processing personal data and additional special category data.

The information we collect is required in order to have a complete picture of your housing and support needs and allows us to better help you. You do not have to give us your information if you do not want to. However, if we do not have this information we may not be able to assess your needs or provide you with appropriate housing and support services.

As part of the continuing efforts to keep you safe and living independently we may also receive personal information about you from others. This could include:

• family members and friends
• NHS agencies (such as GP's or hospitals)
• commissioned support providers
• other local authorities
• voluntary sector organisations and
• the West Midlands Police

The reasons we share your information
We may share your information with other council departments or third parties. Dudley’s policy is that all information will only be shared among council services and other agencies, such as health and well-being colleagues, where we have a legal power or duty to do this. In this way it should help to improve the service you receive from us, to communicate and provide other services that are appropriate to your needs, and develop further services.

Sharing to provide services
Your personal information may be shared with internal departments in the Council, or with external partners and agencies outside of the Council. This may include charities involved in delivering services on the Council’s behalf. Sometimes we will have a legal reason to share your data with a partner. They will only have access to your information on a need to know basis. We will only share what they need to know to do the job or deliver a service to you. Your privacy and the security of sharing this information is checked when we start to work with someone new. Examples are:

• local and central government and other public bodies. For example; the Department for Health and Social Care; and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP);
• other Local Authorities (other Councils);
• ombudsman and regulatory authorities, who will be investigating your concerns or complaints;
• health bodies in the local area, and sometimes nationally. Dudley GP's, Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, Black County Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Dudley Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG);
• partners that are part of improvement projects. For example, the Better Care Fund;
• commissioned support providers such as domiciliary agencies; and
• police bodies.

We also share information with 3rd party organisations, such as insurers or solicitors who are acting on your behalf. This is usually done with your consent, unless there is a legal reason (as below) to share without your consent.

Sharing to comply with the Law
The council may also provide personal information to third parties, where it is necessary to do so to comply with the law. We will share where we are required to under UK Data Protection law (General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679, Data Protection Act 2018). For example, we might need to use your information and share it with others for one or more of the following reasons:

• for the purposes of the prevention and detection of crime;
• to protect the public purse and to minimise waste;
• it is otherwise necessary to comply with any other legal obligations

Examples of third parties who we may share your information with, where a law requires us to, include (but are not limited to):

• health bodies (NHS Trusts, GPs);
• the Police;
• local and central government and other public bodies. For example the Department for Health and Social Care; and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP);
• other Local Authorities (other Councils);
• Care Quality Commission; and
• West Midlands Fire Service

The Council puts agreements in place with partners we share with to ensure we all protect your data properly, and are only sharing the minimum amount of data we need to provide you with a service. More information on council services and information sharing can be found on the council’s privacy statement. 

Where we need to share sensitive or confidential information such as medical details, we will do so only with your permission or where we are legally required to. We may share sensitive or confidential information to prevent risk of harm to you or another person, for example in the case of Safeguarding vulnerable people.

Other important things to know about sharing
Housing Options and Support will not transfer your personal data outside the European Union/European Economic Area.

Your personal data will not be used for automated decision making or profiling. Automated decision making is making a decision solely without any human involvement. Profiling can be part of an automated decision making process. It is where your personal data is used to evaluate certain things about you.

We keep your personal data for no longer than reasonably necessary and in line with our corporate data retention schedule. The corporate data retention schedule is a list of specific categories of records and how long they should be kept. We will stop using your data after we no longer have a legal reason to use your information, which may be when your services have ended. You can request a copy of our retention periods for specified information by contacting our Corporate Information Governance Team via email.

DWP, DfE and MOJ will only keep your personal information for a month and will not keep records showing you were part of this research.

MHCLG will keep your personal information for five years.