Housing department privacy notice

Our responsibilities to treat your data securely and the circumstances in which we share your data with our partners.

Last updated: October 2023

Who we are and how to contact us

We're the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham's (H&F's) Housing Service.

H&F is the Controller for the personal data we process. Our Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) registration number is: Z5124889.

You can contact H&F's Housing Service using the details on our Contact us about housing webpage.

General council contact information, including our switchboard phone number and our address is on our council 'Contact us' page.

Please see 'Your data rights' for:

  • how to contact us to exercise your data rights (e.g. to access your data) or if you're unhappy with how we use your data or comply with your data rights
  • how to contact our Data Protection Officer (DPO).

What we collect and process

We process data you've given us directly as well as data we get from others, this can include:

  • your name, address and contact details, including email address and telephone number,
  • your date of birth, gender and ethnicity or race
  • information about your marital status, next of kin and their emergency contact details
  • financial information such as bank details and transactional data including payments to or from you and credit checks
  • details of your bank account and payment card details
  • information about medical or health conditions, including whether you have a disability and support needs
  • employment details, including your national insurance number and income
  • information about the property you live in and your housing history.
  • information about any criminal convictions

Why we need it and what we do with it

Our purpose for processing your data

We process your data to:

  • assess your housing and re-housing needs
  • deliver our landlord and other housing services, including managing your tenancy contract with us
  • provide advice and guidance to help you sustain your tenancy
  • help facilitate rent payments
  • meet our regulatory requirement by consulting with you on any major changes to our service
  • administer your Housing account and to provide services you have requested from us or that we need to provide/enforce.
  • allow us to have and offer tailored conversations with you to enable us to deliver our services to your needs, for example the information you provide to H&F's My Account will be used by our staff and third parties to provide council services on our behalf.
  • monitor services to:
    • ensure they are delivered in a fair and equitable way
    • support future service development and delivery
    • provide statistical data for statutory returns and governance and compliance purposes
  • for the purpose of law enforcement, regulation and licensing, criminal prosecutions, and court proceeding, to undertake the functions efficiently and effectively.
  • to maintain and improve the services which we deliver, this includes developing and upgrading the systems which we use to process your information.
  • for research and analysis purposes, to help us design the services we provide and to identify and contact residents who may benefit from them.
  • to protect the public funds we administer. To this end we may use the data you have supplied for your housing/council tax award and/or council tax account for the purposes of the prevention and detection of fraud. This includes data matching exercises such as the National Fraud Initiative.

Most of our processing of your data is necessary to comply with our legal obligations or to fulfil our public tasks under the Housing Acts 1985, 1988, 1996, and 2004, the Homelessness Act 2002, the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, Housing and Regeneration Act 2008 and the Housing Health and Safety Rating System Regulations 2005.

We may also use your personal data to contact you by telephone, in person, email, text message and social media to send you updates about the services we provide you, or actions we need you to take, for example about your rent. Our lawful basis for processing your personal data in this way is 'legitimate interest'.

Who we share it with

We share your data with, and may obtain your data from:

  • other service areas in H&F such as ACE Reference (School Attendance(statutory), adult social care, contact tracing teams, electoral register services, community safety teams.
  • our suppliers who help us deliver our service, they act as our data processor and we only share the data they need to process your information on our behalf. Examples: Our housing and compliance software application providers (NEC Housing, Technology Forge); our appointed repairs and maintenance and compliance contractors; Surveyors.
  • our partners we work with to deliver our service. We will have an information sharing agreement which will set out what they can use the data for:
    • other Local authorities
    • Health Services
    • Social housing providers
    • Third sector organisations
  • Other organisations where they have a legitimate and lawful basis to process your data:
    • central Government departments and agencies, including:
      • Department of Work and Pensions
      • HMRC
      • Cabinet Office
    • regulatory bodies, including:
      • Information Commissioner's Office, for example when they are investigating a complaint made by you.
    • credit reference agencies
    • specified anti-fraud organisations (SAFOs) and fraud prevention agencies
    • Police and other law enforcement agencies
    • Fire services
    • Judicial agencies e.g., courts
    • Employers
    • Independent research organizations to carry out programme of research with tenants to help council understand how tenants feel about their home and services received, in order to improve their services.

We only process your data in the UK and EEA.

How long we keep it

We keep your data for only as long as it is required by law or we need it to provide you with services.

When we no longer need your data, we'll dispose of it securely or, if it's of historic interest, we'll transfer it to our local archives service.

We may also anonymise some personal data you provide to us to ensure that you cannot be identified and use this data to allow the Council to effectively target and plan the provision of services.

What are your rights?

You have the right to:

  • be informed – we do this through this privacy notice
  • access your data - by making a subject access request to us
  • have us change incorrect or incomplete data

You may also have the right to:

  • have us delete your data
  • restrict how we process your data
  • object to how we process your data
  • data portability
  • have a person check automated decisions and automated profiling which may result in a potentially damaging decision about you.

For more information on your rights and how to exercise them, please see Your data rights – what they are and Your data rights – how to exercise them.

Who to contact if you're unhappy about how we use your data or comply with your data rights

For who to contact if you're unhappy, please see Your data rights – who to contact if you're unhappy.

What if this notice changes?

If we make a big change to what personal data we process, how or why we process it, or who processes it we'll update this notice. We may also contact you using other communication channels to make you aware of the changes.

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