Privacy and Data Protection

Collecting Your Personal Information

Hilldale Housing Association needs to collect and use personal information to provide homes and services, manage our relationship with you and meet our legal and regulatory responsibilities.

This privacy notice explains what personal information we collect, why we use it, who we may share it with, how we protect it and your rights.

We may collect and use information about:

  • Our tenants
  • People who apply for a home with us
  • People who take part in our surveys, consultations or tenant engagement activities
  • Colleagues, volunteers, temporary workers and people working for organisations that provide services on our behalf.
  • Contractors, suppliers and other organisations we work with.
  • Anyone who contacts us, including through our website, email, telephone or social media.

For data protection purposes, Hilldale Housing Association Limited (Registered Charitable Community Benefit Society Number 8777) is the data controller for personal information where we determine why and how it is used.

We may update this privacy notice from time to time. We recommend checking this page periodically for any changes.

Our Data Protection Officer

Our Data Protection Officer is Anne-Marie Holyoak, Head of Operations. The Data Protection Officer provides advice and support to help Hilldale meet its responsibilities under data protection law.

You can contact our Data Protection Officer:

Email: hello@hilldale.org.uk

Post:
Hilldale Housing Association Limited
Quays Reach
16 Carolina Way
Salford
M50 2ZY

The Information We Collect

The information we collect will depend on your relationship with us and the services we provide. It may include:

  • Identity information, such as your name, title, date of birth and gender.
  • Contact information, including your address, telephone number and email address.
  • Household, and tenancy information.
  • Financial information, including income, benefits, service charges and rent payments.
  • Information about support, care or adaptations where this is necessary to provide or manage services.
  • Information relating to health, disability or other support needs.
  • Information about criminal convictions, offences or legal proceedings where we have a lawful reason to collect it.
  • Immigration or eligibility information where relevant and lawful.
  • Information about anti-social behaviour, safeguarding or tenancy management matters.
  • Feedback, complaints, compliments, survey responses and information from tenant engagement activities.
  • Records and notes from emails, telephone calls, correspondence and face-to-face contact.

Some of this information may be classed as special category personal data or criminal offence data and is given additional protection under data protection law. Where we use this information, we will ensure that we have both an appropriate lawful basis and, where required, an additional legal condition for processing it. The ICO confirms these additional requirements apply to special category and criminal offence information.

How We Use Your Information

Data protection law requires us to have a lawful basis for collecting and using your personal information. Depending on the circumstances, we may use your information because:

  • It is necessary to enter into or manage a contract with you, such as your tenancy or licence agreement.
  • We need it to comply with a legal obligation.
  • It is necessary to carry out a task in the public interest, where applicable.
  • It is necessary for our legitimate interests or those of another organisation, provided your rights and interests do not override those interests.
  • You have given us your consent, where consent is the appropriate lawful basis.
  • In limited circumstances, it is necessary to protect someone’s vital interests.

We may use your information to:

  • Assess housing applications and allocate homes.
  • Set up and manage tenancies and licence agreements.
  • Manage rent, service charges and other payments.
  • Provide repairs, maintenance, adaptations and other property services.
  • Provide appropriate housing, support and tenancy management services.
  • Meet our legal and regulatory requirements, including requirements relating to rents and social housing regulation.
  • Communicate with you about your home and the services we provide.
  • Seek feedback, understand tenant satisfaction and improve our services.
  • Manage complaints and other enquiries.
  • Prevent and investigate fraud, theft, anti-social behaviour and other unlawful activity.
  • Safeguard tenants, household members, colleagues, contractors and other people.
  • Monitor our performance and demonstrate compliance with our regulatory responsibilities.

The ICO requires organisations to identify an appropriate lawful basis before processing personal information and to be clear and transparent about how information will be used.

Sharing Your Information

We only share personal information where there is an appropriate and lawful reason to do so.

Depending on the circumstances, we may share information with:

  • Local authorities and government bodies, including where necessary for Housing Benefit or other benefit claims.
  • Organisations carrying out eligibility or immigration checks where these are legally required.
  • Care, support and health providers where sharing is necessary and lawful.
  • The police, courts, emergency services and other statutory organisations when necessary and permitted by law.
  • Our regulators and other government or public bodies where we are legally or regulatorily required to provide information.
  • Auditors, solicitors, insurers, consultants and other professional advisers.
  • Contractors and organisations providing services to us or on our behalf, such as repairs, maintenance and IT services.
  • An advocate, representative or other person authorised to act on your behalf.

Where another organisation processes personal information on our behalf, we require appropriate data protection and security arrangements to be in place.

We will not sell your personal information.

Storing and Protecting Your Information

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal information against loss, misuse, unauthorised access, alteration or disclosure.

We use third-party suppliers, including ICT providers, to support some of our services and the storage of information. We require providers that process personal information on our behalf to have appropriate contractual, security and data protection arrangements in place.

We will only keep personal information for as long as we need it for the purpose for which it was collected, or where we are required to retain it by law, regulation or another legitimate requirement. Our retention arrangements determine how long different types of information are kept.

We will use appropriate safeguards where personal information is transferred outside the UK where these are required under data protection law.

Retention and data sharing form part of organisations’ UK GDPR documentation requirements.

Your Data Protection Rights

Depending on the circumstances and the lawful basis we rely on, data protection law may give you rights including:

  • The right to be informed about how we use your information.
  • The right of access to personal information we hold about you.
  • The right to rectification if information is inaccurate or incomplete.
  • The right to erasure in certain circumstances.
  • The right to restrict processing in certain circumstances.
  • The right to object to certain uses of your personal information.
  • The right to data portability in certain circumstances.
  • Rights relating to automated decision-making and profiling, where applicable.
  • The right to withdraw consent where we rely on your consent to use your information.

These rights do not apply in every situation and there may be legal reasons why we cannot meet a particular request.

Further information about your rights is available from the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Questions and Complaints

If you have a question about how we use your personal information or would like to exercise one of your data protection rights, please contact us:

Email: hello@hilldale.org.uk

Post:
Hilldale Housing Association Limited
Quays Reach
16 Carolina Way
Salford
M50 2ZY

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal information, you can raise a complaint with us through our complaints process.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s independent regulator for data protection.

Further information is available at https://ico.org.uk/.