Housing

North Tyneside Council are committed to protecting privacy and security of your personal information as Data Controller. The use of ‘we’ throughout this notice means North Tyneside Council. This Privacy Notice describes how we collect and use information about you in relation to your tenancy in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation.

We will only process your information or share your information with others when it is necessary:

• To effectively manage your tenancy;
• To comply with the law and other regulations that affect us;
• To protect the safety of yourself and others;
• To carry out the work we are authorised to do in the public interest;
• To protect your interests and those of North Tyneside Council.

If we need to process information about you and your tenancy for any reason other than those listed above, we will ask your permission to do so and record your consent.

We obtain information about you:

• When you register and complete the Tyne and Wear Homes application form;
• When you contact us;
• When we contact you;
• From third parties when it relates to the management of your tenancy.

We keep records about you to enable us to manage your tenancy. These may be written down (manual records), or kept on a computer (electronic records).

These records may include:

• Personal details about you, for example, name, address, date of birth;
• Unique identifiers (such as your National Insurance number);
• Photographs or photographic ID;
• Contacts we have had with you, for example, appointments and letters;
• Notes and reports about your relevant circumstances;
• Details and records about the service you have received;
• Financial information;
• Information from third parties to assist us with the management of your tenancy.

We may need to contact third party organisations in order to manage your tenancy. We will only share information which is relevant to the enquiry and is required for the organisation to identify you and / or other household members.

Third party organisations can include but are not limited to:

• Current and previous landlords;
• Health professionals;
• Support Services;
• Public Authorities, for example the Department of Work and Pensions, the Police and the Probation Service;
• Contractors acting on behalf of North Tyneside Council;
• Financial organisations such as credit reference agencies, debt collection and tracing agents;
• Suppliers of services, for example, utility companies.

All our third parties are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with legal obligations. We do not allow our third parties to use your data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your data in accordance with our direct instructions.

We do not make any decisions about you using automated means. We do carry out profiling in the form of Rent Sense by Mobysoft in order to help facilitate rent payments and assist in the performance of the contract. To quote the RentSense website:

“RentSense is a series of complex algorithms that analyse a housing organisation’s tenants’ transactional history, which is coupled with a predictive analytical application that then predicts which tenants will and won’t pay their rent. It then produces a list of tenants, in priority order, that need contacting that week regarding their rent.”

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidently lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. 

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for and to meet our statutory reporting requirements. We will store and retain your information in line with the Council’s retention policy.

Your rights are set out in in Articles 13 to 22 of the General Data Protection Regulation 2016 and include:

• The right to access your personal information, to request rectification or erasure of certain personal information and to object to processing in certain circumstances.
• The right to withdraw any consent you may have given to process your personal information.
• The right to complain to the Information Commissioner if you feel we are processing your personal information unlawfully.
• The right to restrict processing activity in certain circumstances.
• The right to object to certain types of processing activity

If you want to know more about what information we store and share about you, please speak to your Housing Officer or see the Authorities full Privacy Notice.

Or write to:

Data Protection Officer
North Tyneside Council
The Silverlink North
Cobalt Business Park
North Tyneside
NE27 0BY
Email: information.governance@northtyneside.gov.uk
Tel: 0191 643 2333

Or you may contact the Information Commissioners Office at https://ico.org.uk.