Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction Scheme - Privacy Policy
As a billing authority for the city, Southampton City Council (SCC) collects, processes, shares, and stores personal information about your household in order to administer Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction.
We also use the data in our Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction Council Tax database for other purposes, including the performance of our statutory enforcement duties and the prevention and detection of fraud.
This privacy notice tells you what to expect when Southampton City Council (SCC) collects personal information about you.
This notice should be read in conjunction with our global privacy notice and when appropriate, we will provide a “just in time” notice to cover any additional processing activities not mentioned in this notice.
How we get your information
We get information about you from the following sources:
- Directly from you
- Central government agencies
- Other local authorities
- Family members
- Household members
What personal data we process and why
The information we process about you will vary depending on the service being provided, but will fall within the following categories:
- Personal information (such as name, address, dates of birth, national insurance numbers for you and certain persons in your household)
- Personal circumstances (such as relationships with others in the household, disabilities, certain medical details, whether you or any members of your household are a carer or being cared for, whether you or any members of your household are students, or persons from abroad)
- Financial information (such as all income and capital details, whether you or any members of your household receive any maintenance, grants, loans, or benefits)
- Housing details (such as type of accommodation you live in, rent paid, landlord details and whether your rent is up to date)
- Contact details (such as telephone numbers, email addresses to be able to contact you in relation to your claim)
- Employment details for you or any members of your household, to assess your eligibility for our Housing Benefit and/or Council Tax Reduction Scheme
Information relating to your health and wellbeing and other special category data
In order to meet our statutory and legal obligations in respect of this services, we may also need to process sensitive, or “special category” personal data about you, which could include data related to:
- Physical or mental health details to assess your eligibility for discounts and exemptions
Lawful basis for processing your personal data
Depending on the service, we rely on the following lawful basis for processing your personal data under the GDPR:
- Article 6(1)(e) for the performance of our public task
Special category data
Where the information we process is special category data, for example your health data, the additional bases for processing that we rely on are:
- Article 9(2)(g) for reasons of substantial public interest
In addition we rely on processing conditions at Schedule 1 part 2 of the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA2018). This relates to the processing of special category data for:
- Statutory etc. and government purposes
Our Policy on Processing Special Category Data provides further information about this processing.
How long we keep your personal data for
In accordance with our retention schedule, we keep our Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction Scheme current claim form to support live claim plus six years after claim cease, data may be retained in an anonymised form for statistical and reporting purposes.
Data sharing
In performing this service, it may be necessary for us to share some of your personal data with external organisations or internal departments. We may share information with the following types of organisations:
- Cabinet office – National fraud initiative, see further information section
- HM courts and tribunals service
- Local government
- Southampton Council Tax and Nation Non Domestic Service
- Police
- Social housing associations
- Private landlords
- Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
- Where Housing Benefit has been overpaid or where Council Tax is to be recovered, the Council will share relevant data to enable recovery from benefits, take action through the County Court or Magistrates Court, request employers to make deductions from wages and instruct enforcement agents in accordance with Housing Benefit Regulations 2006, The Housing Benefit (Persons who have attained the qualifying age for State Pension Credit) Regulations 2006 and the Council Tax (Administration and Enforcement) Regulations 1992
- The Benefit Service sometimes needs information about people other than the person who has applied for a benefit or service to work out what that person is entitled to. For example, where a person makes a claim for Housing Benefit (this only applies for Housing Benefit claims), we need information about other people who live in the same household (known as a non-dependent) so to work out how much the person will be paid. In this case, we can access via secured access to DWP systems to obtain earnings details of a non-dependent
- Welfare advisors
- Employment mentors
- Corporate fraud officers
- Corporate debt officers
- Financial assessment officer (care needs)
- HMRC
- Where Housing Benefit has been overpaid or where Council Tax is to be recovered, the Council will share relevant data to enable recovery from benefits, take action through the County Court or Magistrates Court, request employers to make deductions from wages and instruct enforcement agents in accordance with Housing Benefit Regulations 2006, The Housing Benefit (Persons who have attained the qualifying age for State Pension Credit) Regulations 2006 and the Council Tax (Administration and Enforcement) Regulations 1992
- The Benefit Service sometimes needs information about people other than the person who has applied for a benefit or service to work out what that person is entitled to. For example, where a person makes a claim for Housing Benefit (this only applies for Housing Benefit claims), we need information about other people who live in the same household (known as a non-dependent) so to work out how much the person will be paid. In this case, we can access via secured access to DWP systems to obtain earnings details of a non-dependent
- Valuation office
- Health and social care organisations
In some circumstances, such as under a court order, we are legally obliged to share information, and we may also share information with the Police and other enforcement agencies for the purposes of the prevention, investigation, detection, or prosecution of criminal offences.
We may also share information internally, in order to verify or confirm your personal details, to ensure our records are accurate and up-to-date. Data held by this service will only be used by other internal departments or services when we are satisfied there is a lawful basis for doing so, and that is it fair.
Contact by text or email
We need to review your claim
We may send you a request to complete a review form or if we just need to confirm the information, we hold is correct. Each year local authorities nationwide receive a high volume of applications for Benefit support, these need to be reviewed on a periodic basis to make sure the award of benefit is correct and is still applicable.
In addition
If an email address is provided, this will be used to send you messages and communications related to the service or make you aware of important information that may affect you. You will be able to unsubscribe from these emails or choose which types of messages you wish to receive.
Any benefit notifications will be issued via the post or can be accessed via online account. To set up an online account go to Log in or setup an online Benefits Account.
Do we use data processors?
Data processors are third parties who provide certain parts of our services for us. We have contracts in place with them and they cannot do anything with your personal information unless we have instructed them to do so. Our current data processors for this service are listed below.
| Data Processor | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Capita One Revenues and Benefits (supplier Capita) | The system used to administer Council Tax and Council Tax Reduction |
| Capita Intelligent Communications (CIC) | Supplier we use to send Council Tax and business rates bills, Council Tax and business recovery documents, benefit notifications, Financial Assessments documents, further request letters and communication letters |
| Civica digital Workflow 360 | The system used to store correspondence |
Transfer of personal data
No data is transferred overseas as part of this service.
Automated Decision Making
We may make automated decisions based on data provided daily by Department for Work and Pensions and HMRC.
Further Information
The council has a duty to protect the public funds it administers and may use the information you have provided or share it with other bodies for the purpose of preventing and detecting fraud. This includes participation with the Cabinet Office.
The Cabinet Office is responsible for carrying out data matching exercises.
Data matching involves comparing computer records held by one body against other computer records held by the same or another body to see how far they match. This is usually personal information.
Computerised data matching allows potentially fraudulent claims and payments to be identified. Where a match is found it may indicate that there is an inconsistency which requires further investigation. No assumption can be made as to whether there is fraud, error or other explanation until an investigation is carried out.
We participate in the Cabinet Office's National Fraud Initiative; a data matching exercise to assist in the prevention and detection of fraud. We are required to provide particular sets of data to the Minister for the Cabinet Office for matching for each exercise, as detailed on:
The use of data by the Cabinet Office in a data matching exercise is carried out with statutory authority under Part 6 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. It does not require the consent of the individuals concerned under the Data Protection Act 1998.
Data matching by the Cabinet Office is subject to a Code of Practice.
More information on the Cabinet Office's legal powers and the reasons why it matches particular information.
