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Privacy Notice

Our contact details for data protection purposes are:

Data Protection Officer
Red Kite Community Housing
Windsor Court
Kingsmead Business Park
High Wycombe
HP11 1JU

dataprotection@redkitehousing.org.uk

Protecting your data... keeping your confidence

This Privacy Notice applies to all the personal data we collect and use. Red Kite Community Housing Limited (Red Kite) is the 'Data Controller' for the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulations (UK GDPR) and UK Data Protection Act (2018).

In order to help provide you with the best and most appropriate service, we need you to help us by providing us with your detailed information.

Because the information you provide us is very personal we take your privacy and confidentiality very seriously.

We aim to keep your information as up-to-date as possible so that when your needs change over time, the services we provide you can change to reflect these different needs. We will also ensure we make every possible effort to fulfil our obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) which took effect on the 25th May 2018 and the UK Data Protection Act 2018.

We will keep your personal information secure and only keep it as long as we need to, although please bear in mind we are legally obliged to keep some records for an extended period of time, such as housing benefit payments, before it's safely destroyed.

What personal data do we collect about you?

When using the term 'personal data' in this Privacy Notice, we mean information that relates to you and allows us to identify you, either directly or in combination with other information that we may hold.

We collect some personal data from you, for example when you first apply for a home, use our website or contact us. We may also receive your personal data from our commercial partners who provide services to you on our behalf, and our partners' agencies.

In accordance with data protections laws, we need a “legal basis” for collecting and using information about you. There are a variety of different legal basis for processing personal data which are set out in the data protection laws.

The lawful basis on which we rely in order to use non-sensitive information which we collect about you will be that it is necessary for us to assess your housing application prior to entering into an agreement with you.

The lawful basis on which we rely in order to use your special categories of personal data which we collect about you will be that it is necessary for us to assess your particular housing needs, so that we can comply with our obligations as a social landlord.

The lawful basis on which we rely, in order to use information and financial circumstances, will be that you have provided explicit consent to use that information for that purpose, so that we can provide tailored rent management services to you to help you to manage your rent account.

Detailed personal information we collect may be some or all of the following:

  • Age
  • Bank details
  • Benefits
  • Caring responsibilities
  • Contact details of individuals who you want us to communicate with on your behalf
  • Date of birth
  • Education details
  • Employment details
  • Family details
  • Financial information including income, expenditure details
  • Lifestyle and social circumstances
  • National Insurance number
  • Nationality
  • Reference information
  • Relationship status
  • Safety and Security details
  • Visual images, personal appearance and behaviour
  • Your particular needs or preferences so that we can understand them better
  • Social housing tenancies you have held
  • Past criminal offences if we need it to ensure that we can protect our staff and the communities we work

We may sometimes collect additional information about you from third parties. If we do we will seek to ensure that the information is accurate and up to date.

We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. These reasons for processing are known as 'processing conditions' and we will always ensure that we have a lawful processing condition whenever we process your personal data. Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances:

  • Where we need to perform the contract we have entered into with you
  • Where we need to comply with a legal obligation, such as providing information HRMC or DWP
  • Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests

We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:

  • Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else's interests)
  • Where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes

We may also process some of your data because it is in our legitimate interest to make sure that:

  • Our service/homes meet the needs of potential tenants and leaseholders
  • We can contact tenants and leaseholders in the event of emergencies and to carry out essential repairs and safety checks
  • We communicate with tenants and leaseholders to meet our business objectives, encourage social inclusion and help build communities
  • We work with authorities and the Police to support safer communities
  • We can manage and prevent outstanding debts for example from unpaid rent and service charges
  • We make the most efficient use of our resources and understand how we are performing
  • We understand our tenants' and leaseholders' experiences and views so that we can effectively influence and contribute to our future housing strategies.

Situations in which we will use your personal information

We need all the categories of information in the list above primarily to allow us to perform our contract with you to provide you with housing and other services with you and to enable us to comply with our legal obligations. In some cases we may use your personal information to pursue legitimate interests of our own or those of third parties, provided your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.

Some of the above grounds for processing will overlap and there may be several grounds which justify our use of your personal information.

If you fail to provide personal information

If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have entered into with you, or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations (such as to ensure the health and safety of our workers).

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

Special categories of personal data

In the course of providing services to you, we may collect information that details your gender and gender identity, racial or ethnic origin, physical or mental health, sexuality, religious beliefs or alleged commission or conviction of criminal offences.

Such information is included within the 'Special Categories of Personal Data' under the UK GDPR. We only collect this information where you have given your explicit consent, it is necessary under laws relating to social security and social protection law or it is necessary in connection with legal proceedings or you have chosen to make it public.

If we are collecting special category data which we can only process with your explicit consent, we will make this clear at the time. You will have the right to withdraw that consent and we will explain to you how you can do that when you provide the consent but this may mean we are unable to provide all or parts of the services you have requested from us.

Do we need your consent?

We do not need your consent if we use special categories of your personal information in accordance with our written policy to carry out our legal obligations or exercise specific rights in the field of social protection or social security. In limited circumstances, we may approach you for your written consent to allow us to process certain particularly sensitive data. If we do so, we will provide you with full details of the information that 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 your tenancy with us that you agree to any request for consent from us.

How and why we use your personal data (our 'Permitted Purposes')

We may use your personal data for the following purposes:

To process your application for housing, and to administer housing waiting lists. This is likely to include processing information about your history, for example other social housing tenancies you have held or about past criminal offences if we need it to ensure that we can protect our staff and the communities we work.

We may only use information relating to criminal convictions where the law allows us to do so.

To manage your tenancy contract, and contact you about your housing needs including:

  • Your support needs, so we know how we can assist you before and during your tenancy
  • Details relating to the repair and maintenance of your home
  • Feedback from our contractors, about their appointments with you
  • As part of our normal processes we may also share your data with our volunteers or appeals panels in line with managing or assisting you with your tenancy. Any recipients involved in these processes are bound by appropriate confidentiality terms to ensure the safety of your data.

Voice recordings to prevent fraud, to ensure we have accurate records and to improve our internal training and quality management.

To help you buy part or the whole of your home, including:

  • Affordability checks
  • Credit rating data

To provide security:

  • Where we operate CCTV systems this is to provide security for our staff, tenants, and leaseholders to help detect and prevent crime. The system will collect and records image, and is used in accordance with our CCTV Policy.

To provide additional services, advice and support if you ask for these – this may require us to process the following information:

  • Name and contact details for someone to contact you (the person may be a member of staff or from another organisation that we will tell you about)
  • If you ask us for care and support requirements, we will need to hold detailed information about you and your family's needs
  • Records of payments for the services provided to you
  • If you contact us about financial problems we will hold detailed information about your income and financial situation
  • If we offer you training or other learning opportunities we will need to ask about your employment and learning history

To communicate with you and manage our relationship with you:

  • We may need to contact you by telephone, email and/or SMS for administrative or operational reasons e.g. in order to send you confirmation of your repair bookings, gas servicing and your payments
  • We will use your personal data if we contact you after you have sent us a request, filled in a web-form through our website or contacted us on social media
  • Your opinion is very important to us, so we may send you an email or SMS to seek your feedback
  • We will use the communications you exchange with us and the feedback you may provide in order to manage our relationship with you as our tenant or leaseholder and to improve our services and experiences for other tenants and leaseholders

To personalise and improve your customer service experience:

  • We may use your personal data in order to tailor our services to your needs and preferences, and to provide you with a personalised customer experience e.g. if you inform us about your disabilities
  • We may also collect information on how you use our website, which pages of our website you visit most, which online services you use, in order to understand what you like. We may use this information to tailor the content and services and, if you have agreed to receiving marketing communications, to send you relevant messages
  • If you are in the process of making a request under your account and you leave our website before your request has been completed, we may contact you in order to help you easily complete your request or make payment
  • You may choose to provide details of your friends, relatives or neighbours who you trust to contact us on your behalf
  • Your name and contact details for customer satisfaction surveys, newsletters and service information
  • With your consent, your name, photo, video or story could be used for brochures, advertising or press releases. This consent can be withdrawn at any time by contacting the Data Protection Officer using the contact methods detailed at the bottom of this notice. While we may not be able to withdraw all materials that are already in use, we will ensure that no further publications are made that feature your personal information
  • Details about complaints about our service or other individuals, accidents or incidents involving you or your home
  • Your comments about our service or our suppliers' services

To inform you about our news and service that you may like:

  • We may send you marketing communications, if you have indicated that you are happy to receive these, for example when you create an account on our website or apply for a home
  • If you have indicated that you are happy to receive marketing communications, we will provide you with news from us such as new developments that you may be interested in
  • In addition, we may ask you if you are happy to receive communications promoting our partners' products and services. We will only do this where you have given your explicit consent which you can withdraw at any time
  • If you no longer wish to receive marketing communications from us you can opt out at any time by following the relevant unsubscribe link at the bottom of any marketing-related communication you may receive from us
  • If you prefer, you can also call us and express your preference to not receive marketing communications, or send an email to feedback@redkitehousing.org.uk with the subject title 'Unsubscribe'

To fulfil our administrative purposes and protect our business interests

  • The business purposes for which we will use your information include accounting, billing and audit, credit or other payment card verification, fraud screening, safety, security and legal purposes, statistical and marketing analysis, systems testing, maintenance and development.

To comply with our legal obligations:

  • For example, our obligation to provide your information to the Department for Works and Pensions and HMRC.

Automated decision-making

Automated decision-making takes place when an electronic system uses personal information to make a decision without human intervention. We are allowed to use automated decision-making in the following circumstances:

  • Where we have notified you of the decision and given you 21 days to request a reconsideration.
  • Where it is necessary to perform the contract with you and appropriate measures are in place to safeguard your rights.
  • In limited circumstances, with your explicit written consent and where appropriate measures are in place to safeguard your rights.
  • If we make an automated decision on the basis of any particularly sensitive personal information, we must have either your explicit written consent or it must be justified in the public interest, and we must also put in place appropriate measures to safeguard your rights.

You will not be subject to decisions that will have a significant impact on you based solely on automated decision-making, unless we have a lawful basis for doing so and we have notified you.

We do not envisage that any decisions will be taken about you using automated means, however we will notify you in writing if this position changes.

Data retention

How long will you use my information for?

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you. Once you are no longer a tenant, leaseholder, or service user we will retain and securely destroy your personal information in accordance with our data retention policy or applicable laws and regulations.

For more details on how long we retain specific pieces of information more, please contact our Data Protection Officer through one of our contact points as set out at the bottom of this notice.

Your privacy rights

The introduction of UK GDPR provides all UK citizens with new and enhanced privacy rights, which we are committed to upholding, and we take our responsibilities regarding our tenants' and leaseholders' privacy rights very seriously.

It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your working relationship with us.

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

  • Request that Red Kite gives you access to your personal information (commonly known as a 'data subject access request'). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
  • Request that Red Kite corrects the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
  • Request that Red Kite erases your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
  • Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
  • Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
  • Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.

If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please contact dataprotection@redkitehousing.org.uk.

Accessing your personal data

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.

Right to withdraw consent

In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact our Data Protection Officer. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.

Find out how to request the information we hold about you dataprotection@redkitehousing.org.uk.

Security of your personal data

Red Kite is committed to taking appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage. When you provide your personal data through our websites or online portal, this information is transmitted across the internet securely using appropriate strength encryption.

As detailed in this Notice, we may in some instances disclose your personal data to third parties. Where we do disclose your personal data to a third party, we require that third party to have appropriate technical and organisational measures in place to protect your personal data; however in some instances we may be compelled by law to disclose your personal data to a third party, such as the Police, and have limited control over how it is protected by that party.

The information that you provide us will be held in our systems, which are located on our premises or those of a contractually appointed third party.

We may also instruct service providers outside of Red Kite, domestically or abroad, eg shared service centres, to process personal data for Permitted Purposes on our behalf in accordance with our instructions only. Red Kite will remain control over and will remain fully responsible for your personal data and will use appropriate safeguards as required by applicable law to ensure the integrity and security of your personal data when engaging such service providers.

All of our data is stored within the EEA with the exception of the MailChimp service which we may use from time to time to collect survey data. MailChimp is an online marketing platform operated by The Rocket Science Group LLC, a company based in the state of Georgia in the USA. We have data sharing protocols in place to ensure that MailChimp has the necessary and appropriate technical and organisational measures in place provide adequate protection for any personal data transferred from the UK.

We will retain your personal data for as long as we need it in order to fulfil our purposes set out in this Privacy Notice or in order to comply with the law. If you would like specific details on how long we retain certain data for, please contact our Data Protection Officer using the contact details set out at the bottom of this notice.

Sharing your personal data

Sometimes it is in everyone's best interests for us to share some of the information we have about our tenants and leaseholders with other organisations. Sometimes this is because we have a legal obligation to do so and sometimes it is to ensure you get the best service possible, for example we will forward your details on to utility companies to ensure that you're supplied with energy and water in your home.

If you decide to leave your home without paying or arranging to pay and you are in arrears we may decide it is necessary to share your details with a debt collection agency to help us recover our money.

We will also share some details with our contractors, so they can contact you if your home is in need of repair or scheduled for improvement work, to arrange a suitable time to visit.

In exceptional circumstances we may feel it is necessary to provide your details to the police or a local authority social services department where there has been a case of criminal activity, a breach of your tenancy agreement, we have been made aware of potentially antisocial behaviour or if we believe it your vital interests of you or those of someone who lives with you..

In the event you do leave us and move to a new landlord we might be contacted for a reference and may provide some of your details to them.

If we want to share data your data because we think it is in your interests but we do not have a legal basis for sharing we will always ask for your consent.

We'd like to stress that under no circumstances do we ever sell or pass on your information to business or organisations so they can get in touch with you directly either by phone, email or in writing in order to sell you their products or services.

Listed below are the categories of third parties we may share some of your personal information with. Where required we will ensure that any information sharing is supported by UK GDPR compliant contracts or there are appropriate Information Sharing Protocols in place.

  • Advocacy partner organisations
  • Banks and Financial Service providers to process secure payments
  • Charities and voluntary organisations
  • Choice Based Letting Partners
  • Contractors and suppliers who:
    • Provide services to you, or who provide services on our behalf
    • Enable us to meet our compliance responsibilities e.g. Gas Servicing, Fire Safety, Asbestos Management
    • Undertake repairs or improvements to your home and neighbourhood
    • Provide Technology and Telephony software, services and equipment
    • Manage out-of-hours service calls
    • Provide printing and mailing services
  • Credit Reference Agencies for rental tenants
  • Debt Collection Agencies
  • External Auditors
  • Insurance companies
  • Mediation partner organisations
  • Organisations that support us, and the services we provide including:
    • Local Authorities
    • Other housing providers
    • Statutory agencies
    • Support organisations
  • Probation Services
  • Professional Advisors and Consultants
  • Solicitors
  • Social Welfare organisations
  • Survey and Research organisations
  • Training providers or learning institutions
  • Utility companies.

In some cases we may also have a duty to disclose your information by law to third parties that include but are not limited to:

  • Central Government Departments
  • Courts and Tribunals
  • Fire services
  • Health authorities, trusts or medical staff
  • Local Authorities
  • Organisations who support crime prevention or detection, the prevention and detection of fraud, and for the purposes of the National Fraud Initiative)
  • Other Registered Providers of Social Housing
  • Partner organisations whose purposes are compatible with ours
  • Members of Parliament or Local Councillors
  • Police
  • Regulators

We will not share or disclose your information with anyone who claims to represent you or be acting on your behalf unless we have verified you have appointed them or they are acting in some recognised official capacity.

Updates to our privacy notice

We may make changes to our Privacy Notice from time to time. We will update the Privacy Notice and we will publish on our website any new version of this Notice

Freedom of information

All public bodies are subject to the Freedom of Information Act. This means you're entitled to request certain details from them.

Red Kite isn't a public body for the purposes of this Act, so we're exempt from the requirements, but regardless we'll still consider particular information requests and help you if we can.

Contact information

We have appointed a Data Protection Officer to oversee compliance with this privacy notice.

If you have questions in relation to exercising any of your Privacy Rights or you have a question or concern about how we process your data, please contact our Data Protection Officer in the first instance at dataprotection@redkitehousing.org.uk, via letter to our office address or by telephone on 01494 476100.

If for any reason we do not address your request within 30 days, or fail to provide you with a valid reason why it is unable to do so, or if you are unhappy with the way we have dealt with your personal data, you have the right to contact the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues to make a complaint. They can be contacted via their website or by telephone 0303 123 1113.