We need to collect information about you in order to process your application for a property and (where we subsequently provide you with access to a property) to provide you with our services and manage your relationship with us.
This Data Protection Statement (“this Statement”) explains what information we collect from and about applicants and residents, how their information will be used, how long we keep it for and what their related rights are.
1. Who are we?
1.1 We are Pickering and Ferens Homes. We are a non-profit making registered Housing Association (A4020) and registered charity (No 1014862) whose head office and address for correspondence is at PFH, 7 Beacon Way, Hull, HU3 4AE.
1.2 We are committed to ensuring that all personal information we hold is treated properly and in accordance with applicable data protection legislation. We are registered as a data controller with the Information Commissioner’s Office and our registration number is Z4854829. In accordance with applicable data protection legislation, we are required to explain to you how we will treat any personal information which we collect about you.
1.3 This Statement applies to anybody who applies to us for a property, or we subsequently provide with access to a property (including any person who is named in a licence agreement entered into with us by another person). This Statement covers the personal information we collect in connection with each application for a property and in connection with any property that we subsequently provide you with access to under or in connection with a licence agreement.
1.4 PFH ensures any information provided is kept accurate and up to date, please inform us if any such information requires updating. Where you submit any other person’s details to us, you have that other person’s permission or are otherwise legally permitted to do so on their behalf In some instances, a third party may provide personal data to us on your behalf, in these instances we will ensure that the data subjects is made aware of how we handle their personal data and that there is appropriate consents in place for this.
1.5 You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office if you have any concerns with regard to the way in which we process your personal information (please see their website for further details https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/).
1.6 Please note that any information that you submit to us via our website will be processed in accordance with our website privacy and cookies policy, a copy of which can be accessed via the following URL: https://www.pfh.org.uk/policies/privacy-and-cookie-policy/
2. What information do we collect and how do we use it?
2.1 Where you apply to us for a property or are named in an application submitted to us by someone else for a property, we may collect information about you from the related application form or subsequent correspondence (whether by telephone, e-mail or otherwise). This information may include your name, contact details, date of birth, income, expenditure, capital, investments, equity details, ethnicity, sexuality, health information, information relating to criminal convictions and any other evidence required to prove your ‘Right to Rent’. We may also receive relevant information from a third party such as (in respect of information relating to criminal convictions) the Disclosure and Barring Service.
Application Process
2.2 When processing your personal data, we do so in order for the performance of the contract between PFH and the data subject. When processing special category data PFH have a substantial public interest in processing this as outlined in Schedule 1 Section 18 DPA18 for the purposes of ensuring that meaningful and equal opportunity is provided.
We will only collect information about criminal convictions where it is appropriate for us to do so and where we are legally able to do so. Any such checks will be carried out in order to satisfy ourselves that there is nothing in your criminal convictions history which makes you unsuitable for being accepted for one of our properties having regard to our duty of care to our staff and other residents, in which case we may ask you to seek a basic disclosure of your criminal records history.
If you fail to provide certain information when requested which is necessary for us to consider your application, we may not be able to consider your application any further.
Licence Agreements
Where we agree to provide you with a property under a licence agreement, we will also use your information (including information collected by us during the application process) as explained in sections 2.3 and 2.4 below.
2.3 Where you are the lead resident named in the licence agreement, we will use your information where necessary for the performance of your licence agreement. For example:
(a) your payment card/bank account details will be used by us for collecting your weekly rent;
(b) your contact details will be used to send you regular rent statements and contacting you in relation to any rent arrears. We will also use your contact details to assist us with any other housing management issues, such as assisting with securing the appropriate support services, dealing with complaints or anti-social behaviour cases, or any other issues connected to your licence agreement with us; and
(c) information that you provide to us for the purpose of reporting a repair that we are required to make pursuant to such licence agreement (including your name, contact details, access details and details of the required repairs) will be used by us for the purposes of reviewing the repair, report and administering any subsequent repair.
2.4 For all residents (including the lead resident named in the licence agreement), we will use your personal information as follows:
(a) information that you provide to us for the purpose of submitting a request, enquiry, complaint or other correspondence will be used as necessary for our legitimate interest in responding to the relevant request, enquiry, complaint or correspondence;
(b) information relating to your ethnicity, sexuality and date of birth will be used where necessary for the substantial public interest in ensuring meaningful equal opportunity monitoring, reporting and compliance;
(c) in cases of emergency, we may process and/or disclose your personal information (including health information) to appropriate third parties (such as the emergency services) where necessary to protect the vital interests of you or another person where you are physically or legally (including mentally) incapable of giving us your consent;
(d) to comply with a legal obligation to which we are subject (for example, any statutory obligations to HM Revenue & Customs, any requirements of immigration or health and safety law, and to verify that you legally have the ‘Right to Rent’).
(e) we may use your information where necessary for our legitimate interests in administering and improving our services, complying with our regulatory requirements (including sending our 6 monthly newsletter) and for our own audit and assurance purposes (including via resident satisfaction surveys and as part of our own research and statistical analysis). Where we process particularly sensitive information for such purposes, we do so on the basis that the processing is necessary for the substantial public interest in providing effective housing schemes and services.
(f) we may use information relating to your health (e.g. in relation to any disability) from time to time where necessary for the substantial public interest in us reviewing your status to ensure that any property we provide to you remains appropriate for your requirements.
(g) if you put yourself forward and subsequently become a member of any of our resident committees or working groups, we will use your personal information (including your contact details) where necessary for our legitimate interests in administering the relevant committee or working group.
(h) if we become aware of any issues relating to your conduct or behaviour, in line with our legal obligations to provide a safe working environment we may keep a record of any such issues on file and notify such issues to those of our staff and contractors where reasonably required in connection with their roles; and
(i) if your image is captured in any general photograph that we take in a communal area, we may use that photograph where necessary for our legitimate interests in publicising our activities and services. You are free to object to us doing this at any time by contacting us using any of the contact details set out in this Statement.
2.5 If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may not be able to perform any licence agreement we have entered into with you (such as providing you with a benefit under a licence agreement), or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations (such as to ensure the health and safety of our staff and contractors).
Additional Points Relevant to Both Applicants and Residents
2.6 If you correspond with us by telephone, we may retain a record of and/or the content of your telephone correspondence with us (a) in order for us to appropriately respond to such correspondence where necessary, and (b) for staff training and quality purposes. This may include us recording and monitoring our telephone calls with you for such purposes. Whenever we do this, it shall be on the basis that such recordings and other records are necessary for our legitimate interests (provided that such interests are not overridden by your own interests or fundamental rights and freedoms).
2.7 In limited circumstances, we may approach you for your consent to allow us to process certain information for purposes not referred to in this Statement. If we do so, we will provide you with full details of the information we would like and the reason we need it, so that you can carefully consider whether you wish to consent. You should be aware that it is not a condition of any licence agreement with us that you agree to any request for consent from us. If you do provide us with consent, you will be able to withdraw it at any time via any of the methods set out in section 4.1 of this Statement below. Any such withdrawal will not affect the lawfulness of our processing of your personal information before you withdrew consent.
3. Additional contact from us
3.1 Where you provide us with your related consent, we may also contact you by e-mail, post and/or telephone from time to time to send you correspondence relating to your accommodation and your community which is ancillary to the licence agreement (e.g. in relation to community events and neighbourhood panels).
3.2 You may withdraw your consent to us using your information for any of the purposes set out in section 3.1 above at any time (please see section 4 below for further details).
4. How do you withdraw your consent?
4.1 Where we are processing your personal information on the basis of your consent – for example, if you no longer want to receive our newsletter – you can withdraw your consent at any time. This can be done by e-mailing us at info@pfh.org.uk or writing to us at PFH, 7 Beacon Way, Hull, HU3 4AE or clicking on the appropriate link of any related e-mail. Any such withdrawal will not affect the lawfulness of us relying on your consent before you withdrew it.
4.2 Please note that if you withdraw (or do not provide) your consent to us processing your personal information for any of the purposes described in section 3 above, this means that you will not receive the relevant correspondence from us and therefore may not be made aware of news and activities involving us and your community.
5. To whom we will disclose your personal information?
5.1 We may share your personal information:
(a) with third parties who are directly involved in dealing with any request, enquiry, complaint or other correspondence submitted by you.
(b) with third parties who are providing us with professional advice where necessary for our legitimate interests in obtaining such advice and permitted by law.
(c) where we are legally required to do so.
(d) in connection with criminal investigations, legal proceedings or prospective legal proceedings where necessary for our related legitimate interests and where permitted by law (this may include, following the termination of your licence agreement with us, the disclosure by us of your new contact details to any utility company that contacts us in connection with any utility charges arising in respect of the property to which that licence agreement relates prior to its termination);
(e) where necessary for our legitimate interests in establishing, exercising or defending our legal rights (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention, or to utility companies as mentioned in section 5.1(d) above) and where permitted by law;
(f) if we have urgent concerns about your physical or mental health or general wellbeing (as mentioned in section 2.4(c) above). This may include disclosing relevant information to social care and other specialist agencies; and
(i) where we have stated or informed you otherwise.
5.2 If you receive services from us which involve the services of a third party, we will pass information about you to that third party so they can provide you with those services on our behalf in accordance with our instructions. For example:
(a) if we engage a third party to perform repairs at your property on our behalf, we will disclose to the third party contractor such of your personal information (including general information about your personal circumstances such as basic health information) as is reasonably required by the contractor in order to be able to access your property and perform the repairs;
(b) if you request to receive our newsletter (including but not limited to via our website), your contact details for the purposes of you receiving the newsletter will be passed to our third party marketing services provider Home Marketing (who send out our newsletters on our behalf);
(c) if we engage a third party to provide support services on our behalf, we will (with your consent where we legally need it) disclose to the third party service provider such of your personal information which is reasonably required by them to in order to be able to provide the support service (including details of residents’ Next of Kin and emergency key holders).
5.3 In the event that you provide us with feedback regarding our activities, we may disclose that feedback to those of our suppliers who are involved in those activities where necessary for the suppliers’ legitimate interests.
5.4 We may also disclose your personal information to third parties in the event that we propose to sell or buy any business or assets (in which case we may disclose your personal information to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets) or if we or substantially all of our assets are proposed to be acquired by a third party. Any such disclosure will be made where necessary for the legitimate interests of us and/or the third party in respect of the proposed transaction; however we will not transfer your personal information to any such third party unless we are satisfied that they are able to provide an adequate level of protection in respect of your personal information.
5.5 Except as provided in this Statement, we will not provide or disclose your information to third parties without your express consent for any purpose (including but not limited to direct marketing). We do not sell personal information under any circumstances.
6. Your rights
6.1 You have a legal right to see a copy of the personal information that we keep about you and to require us to correct any inaccuracies, subject to certain exemptions. In some circumstances you may also have the right to:
(a) request that we erase any personal information held about you.
(b) restrict our processing of your personal information (for example, to ask to suspend the processing of personal information to establish its accuracy or the reasons for processing it);
(c) data portability (i.e. to request the transfer of your personal information to a third party); and
(d) object to our processing of your personal information.
6.2 Requests in respect of the above should be made in writing to The Information Compliance Officer at PFH, 7 Beacon Way, Hull, HU3 4AE. Please contact the same address if you have any reason to believe that information we hold about you is inaccurate. We will respond to your request as soon as possible and, in any event, within one month from the date of receiving the request. Please note that we may, where legally permitted, reject any such request or limit the scope of our response (e.g. if, in the circumstances, the right does not apply to you).
6.3 In accordance with applicable data protection legislation, we follow security procedures in the storage and disclosure of your information. We may therefore request proof of your identity before complying with any other request of a nature described in section 6.1 above.
6.4 You will not generally have to pay a fee to exercise any of your rights described in section 6.1 above. However, we may charge a reasonable fee if you make a request to see a copy of your personal information which is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively we may refuse to comply with your request in such circumstances.
7. Security, retention and destruction of your personal information
7.1 We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know that information.
7.2 We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and/or any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.
7.3 Any personal information held by us in relation to any of the purposes described in this Statement will be retained by us for as long as we need it to fulfil the purpose(s) for which it was collected (including the specific purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting or reporting requirements). Further details of our specific retention periods are set out in our information retention policy (a copy of which is available upon request).
7.4 For example, if you have consented to receiving our newsletter or additional contact from us as described in section 3 above, your preferences in that regard will be retained by us unless and until:
(a) we cease producing our newsletter or making the additional contact in respect of which we have obtained your consent; or
(b) you withdraw your consent, following which we will destroy or suppress such personal data without delay so that you no longer receive the relevant correspondence from us.
7.5 Save for any contact preferences suppressed under section 7.4 above, your information will be securely destroyed at the end of the relevant retention period described or otherwise referred to in this section 7.
7.6 Whilst taking into consideration our legal obligations, we will on an ongoing basis: review the length of time that we retain personal data for; consider the purpose or purposes for which we hold the personal data in deciding whether (and for how long) to retain it for; securely delete personal data that is no longer needed for such purpose or purposes; and update, archive or securely delete information if it goes out of date.
8. Third Party Services
Please note that where we recommend or refer you to any third party for information, advice or support (for example, to an external agency such as Astraline, OkEachDay or social services), then in each case that third party will be the controller of any information that you provide to them and will assume corresponding responsibilities under applicable data protection legislation. Such information will be subject to the third party’s privacy policy which you should read. We are not liable for the privacy policies or practices of such third parties in respect of your personal information.
9. How will you know if we make any changes to this Statement?
We may amend this Statement from time to time. If we make any changes to the way in which we use your personal information we will notify you by writing to you or by sending you an e-mail. We will also post a notice on our website’s homepage. You can view the current version of our Applicant and Resident Data Protection Statement at any time by accessing the following URL: https://www.pfh.org.uk/policies/applicant-and-resident-data-protection-statement/
10. Contact
If you have any questions about this Statement or our treatment of your personal data, please write to us by email to info@pfh.org.uk