Newcastle Homes Privacy Notice
Before submitting your application to Newcastle Homes, you will be asked to sign a declaration to say that you have read and understood this Privacy Notice.
General Statement
This Privacy Notice explains who we are, when and why we collect personal information, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure.
We will update this Notice on a regular basis so we recommend that you occasionally review this privacy statement to ensure you are aware of any changes that may be relevant to you.
If we make any significant changes to this privacy notice, we will post notice of the change on Newcastle Homes' website, and you will be deemed to have accepted such changes.
If you have questions or comments about this Privacy Notice or how we handle personal data, please contact the Data Protection Officer (‘DPO’) for Newcastle city Council and Your Homes Newcastle by email dataprotection@newcastle.gov.uk or alternatively contact the DPO or other appointed representative for the organisation listed at the end of this notice.
Who are we?
Newcastle Homes comprises Newcastle City Council (‘NCC), Your Homes Newcastle (‘YHN’) and fourteen Registered Providers of Social Housing (housing associations), who all work together to promote access to council and social housing in Newcastle through a Choice-Based Lettings Scheme, known as Newcastle Homes.
NCC are the housing authority with responsibility for housing in Newcastle. The council provides housing accommodation and exercises general management, regulation, and control of its housing stock.
YHN is an Arm’s Length Management Organisation (‘ALMO’) of NCC, and it is responsible for manage housing and leasehold properties on behalf of the council.
The fourteen Housing Associations are
- Anchor Hannover
- Bernicia Homes
- Castles and Coasts Housing Association
- Home Group
- Hospital of St Mary the Virgin
- Housing 21
- Johnnie Johnson Housing
- Karbon Homes
- Places for People
- Railway Housing Association
- Riverside
- St Anthony of Padua Housing Association
- Thirteen
- Tyne Housing Association.
NCC, YHN and housing associations are data controllers. Each organisation is responsible for the personal information that they collect, use, and hold about you under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (‘the UK GDPR’) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (‘the DPA 2018’).
Why we collect and store personal information
We need to collect, process and store personal information about you and other household members or sometimes relatives* to fulfil our obligations and to deliver efficient and effective services.
*When you provide information about household members or relatives to Newcastle Homes, it is your responsibility to ensure this is done with their full knowledge and consent.
How we collect information about you
We obtain information from you directly in the following ways:
- When you register with the Newcastle Homes website
- When you submit application form and other relevant documentation in support of your application for council and/or social housing
- Telephone calls and emails
We will ask you in the Declaration if you want someone else to act on your behalf. If you choose to do this, we may contact them to obtain further information about you.
We also obtain information about you and family members from third party organisations. We may need to contact third party organisations to obtain information about you to help us assess your application and before an offer of a property can be made.
We will contact you for further information to support your application if required. If we request further information from you, we will inform you why it is required and how the information will be used.
The information we collect, hold, and use about you
The types of information that we collect and use about you and members of your household is categorised as:
Personal information
This is information which is used to identify you and members of your household directly and includes
- Name
- Date of birth
- Photographic identification, such as a passport and/or photographic driving licence
- Your personal circumstances
- Marital status
- Nationality
- Homeowner status
- Financial affairs, including your Income and financial outgoings
- Bank account details.
Sensitive personal information / special category personal information
This comprises sensitive personal information about you and/or other household members, including information about a person’s:
- Gender
- Race
- Religion
- Sexual orientation
- Ethnicity
- Physical or mental health or condition or disability
Sensitive personal information about your health, sexual orientation, race, and religion is subject to particularly stringent security and confidentiality measures.
Criminal convictions and offences
To enable us to assess if you and other members of your household qualify, and are suitable, for council and social housing, you will be required to disclose any unspent criminal convictions and offences. By law you must tell us about certain criminal convictions.
Personal contact information
This is the information that you have given us directly so we can communicate with you, including
- Telephone number
- Email address
- postal address
- contact details of your Next of kin and/or appointed personal representative.
We will ask you in the Declaration if you want someone else to act on your behalf. If you choose to do this, we may contact them to obtain further information about you. It is your responsibility to inform the person that you have given the Authority permission to contact them to discuss your application. We will hold their name and contact details. You can withdraw or change this permission at any time by notifying us in writing.
The information we hold about you will have been provided by you (on application or enquiry forms or when we communicate with you), but we may also hold information provided to us directly by other organisations, where this is relevant to your housing circumstances.
We will only ask for personal information that is appropriate to enable us to deliver the Newcastle Homes service. In some cases, you can refuse to provide your details if you deem a request to be inappropriate. However, you should note that this may impact our ability to provide some services to you if you refuse to provide information that stops us from doing so.
How we use your information
We use your personal information for the following purposes:
- To deliver the Newcastle Homes Choice Based Lettings Service and other housing management services that we provide.
- For assessing your eligibility and qualification to join the housing register
- For assessing your housing and support needs in accordance with Newcastle City Council’s Lettings and Allocations Policy or our Housing Association Lettings policy
- To allocate a property to you if you are eligible and qualify for council or social housing
- To allow you to bid for properties using the choice-based letting scheme or to offer you a Direct Let.
- To conduct checks about you and other family members to verify:
- your identity and household details,
- where you have lived in the last five years,
- your eligibility or qualification and suitability to be a council tenant.
- your financial circumstances: and
- confirmation that you have a local connection to Newcastle.
- your character and the conduct of any current or former tenancy
- To provide information, advice, and support to help you remain in your home, or help finding privately rented accommodation, low-cost home ownership or social housing.
- To carry out pre tenancy support assessment to help determine whether you can manage and sustain a tenancy.
- To contact you to keep you informed in relation to decisions regarding your housing application.
- To conduct appeals and banding reviews in relation to decisions made regarding you and other members of your household.
- To assist with the detection and prevention of fraud and other types of crime, including anti-social behaviour.
- To safeguard and protect children and other vulnerable persons
- For equality monitoring purposes, and to help us monitor the performance of Newcastle Homes and improve our services to customers.
- For dealing with complaints and disputes.
We also use anonymised data (this is information that cannot be used to identity you in any way) to monitor the performance of Newcastle Homes service and to complete central government data returns on allocations within social housing (CORE data returns).
Our lawful bases for processing personal data, special category personal data and personal data relating to criminal conviction and offences under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018
We rely on the following lawful bases for processing information about you and other members of your household for the purposes stated above:
- Article 6(1) – the processing is necessary for us to comply with the law or a legal obligation
- Article 6(1)(e) – the processing is necessary for us to perform the tasks of administering Newcastle City Council’s duty to allocate housing in accordance with its Allocations and Lettings Policy
- Article 9(2)(g) and Paragraph 6 of Part 2 of Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018 - the processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest and the exercise of statutory functions.
- Article 9(2)(g) and Paragraph 10 of Part 2 of Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018 - the processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest and the prevention or detection of unlawful acts.
In addition, we may provide references about you, your character, and the conduct of any tenancy to other landlords upon request where it is necessary to do so for our own legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of the third party to whom your data are disclosed. We rely on Article 6(1)(f) of the UK GDPR for sharing personal information with other landlords so they can decide whether to offer you a tenancy.
Where you have given consent for us to use your personal data for a specific purpose or purposes, your consent will be recorded. You can withdraw your consent to the use of your data for the specific purpose or purposes at any time. However, it is important to note that where you refuse consent for us to use your information for a specific purpose or purposes, it may impact upon our ability to provide certain services to you.
Under what circumstances will my information be shared?
We share information about you with:
- Other Housing Associations when you bid for their properties advertised through Newcastle Homes. This to enable the housing association to assess your application in accordance with their own lettings policy
- Other landlords for the purposes obtaining or providing tenancy references and associated enquiries so they can decide whether to offer you a tenancy.
- With other local authorities and government departments as necessary for administering justice, or exercising statutory, governmental, or other public functions
- With the police and other law enforcement agencies where this is necessary for the prevention and/or detection of crime; the apprehension and/or prosecution of offenders and the assessment or collection of tax or duty. We do not require your permission to share your personal information for these stated purposes.
- With the Cabinet Office and other bodies responsible for auditing, or administering public funds, for the purposes of preventing and detecting fraud. We do not require your permission to share your personal information for these stated purposes
- With other organisations such as NCC Housing Advice centre, and social services, where it is necessary to share information to comply with the law or the exercise of statutory functions.
- With the Housing Ombudsman where is necessary for the purposes of investigating and resolving complaints and disputes raised by customers.
How do we manage and protect your personal information?
At Newcastle Homes, we take the processing of your personal data very seriously.
We process your personal information in accordance with our legal obligations as data controllers under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.
We are committed to ensuring your information is always secure ad we have technical security and organisational measures in place to protect the confidentiality and security of your personal information, irrespective of the method of collection, transfer, or storage.
Access to your personal information is restricted to authorised employees of each organisation only, and on a strictly need to know basis. We will treat your personal information fairly and lawfully and we will ensure that information is:
- Processed for specified and legitimate purposes only
- Kept up to date, accurate, relevant, and not excessive
- Kept no longer than is necessary
- Always kept safe and secure
We save your information using a secure IT system. The system we use is called Abritas and is owned and operated by Civica, who are YHN’s appointed data processor under the terms of a written contract Civica are an ISO 27001 certified company. They have technology and processes in place to always secure and protect your personal data
Your information is also saved to the housing management system of the relevant landlord. You can refer to the landlord’s privacy policy or privacy notice or to find out how they secure and protect the information they hold about you by accessing the links below:
Data Controller |
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Newcastle City Council |
Privacy Notice | Newcastle City Council |
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YHN |
Privacy Notice | Your Homes Newcastle (yhn.org.uk) National Fraud Initiative Notice – Fair Processing Notice | Your Homes Newcastle (yhn.org.uk) |
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Bernicia |
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Castles and Coasts |
Privacy - Castles & Coasts Housing Association (castlesandcoasts.co.uk) |
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Home Group |
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Hospital of St Mary the Virgin |
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Housing 21 |
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Johnnie Johnson Housing |
Privacy Policy - Johnnie Johnson Housing Ltd (jjhousing.co.uk)
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Karbon Homes |
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Places for People |
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Railway Housing Association |
Privacy notice at Railway Housing Association (railwayha.co.uk) |
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Riverside |
Website privacy policy | Riverside
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St Anthony of Padua Housing Association |
www.anthonycareservices.org.uk
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Thirteen |
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Tyne Housing Association |
Privacy Notice - Residents, tenants, service users - Tyne Housing |
We are committed to keeping your personal details up to date and we encourage you to inform us about any changes needed to ensure your details are accurate. To help us to ensure confidentiality of your personal information we may ask you security questions to confirm your identity when you call us and may be necessary when we call you.
Anyone calling Newcastle Homes on your behalf will require prior written authorisation and may also be subject to security questions to ensure we’re taking adequate steps to protect the confidentiality and integrity of your personal information.
Will my personal information be transmitted internationally?
Your personal information held in the Newcastle Homes Choice based letting system is processed and stored here in the UK and is not transmitted outside of the country.
You should refer to the landlord’s privacy policy or privacy notice to find out how they use and protect the information they hold about you.
Retention and disposal of your information
Each organisation has its own Retention and Disposal Policy. We will only hold your personal information for as long as necessary for business purposes or if we are required to keep it by law. This does mean that your data will be retained by each organisation for a period after you have stopped using Newcastle Homes' service.
Updating your information
It is important that your information is accurate and up to date Please make any changes by updating your online application form. You can access your Newcastle Homes account using your login details.
What rights do I have about my personal information and how it is used?
You have rights under the Data Protection Act and the UK GDPR in relation to your personal data processed by Newcastle Homes partners
These rights include:
Marketing – If we ever perform any direct marketing, we will ask you when we collect your personal data if we can use your information for such purposes or if we can disclose information to any third party for such purposes. You can opt out of receiving such marketing at any time.
Right of Access – You have the right to access the personal information that we hold about you; to know what we hold, what format it is in, and have a copy of it if you wish. This is called a Subject Access Request (SAR).
Right to Rectification– If the information we hold on you is incorrect you have the right to ask us to correct it quickly and free of charge. You can exercise this right at any time by contacting us. There may be occasions where we require additional information to process your request such as a name change needing proof of the change of home. You will be required to specify the information that is incorrect and what it is to be replaced with.
Right to Object – You have the right to object to the processing of your personal information at any time. This includes processing your personal data for the purposes of direct marketing.
Right to Erasure - You have the right to request the erasure of your personal data. You can make an erasure request at any time by contacting us but please be aware this right is not absolute; we may refuse to comply with your request if we need to retain your information due to specific legislative or regulatory requirement.
Right to withdraw consent – If we are relying on your consent as the legal basis for using your personal data, you are free to withdraw that consent at any time.
Further information
If you have questions about this Privacy Notice or how we handle your personal information, you can contact the Data Protection Officer (DPO) or appointed representative of the relevant data controller:
Data Controller |
DPO |
Contact email address |
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Newcastle City Council
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Phil Slater, |
dataprotection@newcastle.gov.uk
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YHN |
Phil Slater |
dataprotection@newcastle.gov.uk
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Bernicia |
Data Protection Officer |
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Castles and Coasts |
Jenny Russell |
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Home Group |
Austin Woods |
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Hospital of St Mary the Virgin |
the Manager |
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Housing 21 |
Data Protection Officer |
dataprotection@housing21.org.uk
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Johnnie Johnson Housing |
Sarah-Jane Gilmore, Head of Governance, Risk and Assurance |
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Karbon Homes |
Jill Johnson |
data.protection@karbonhomes.co.uk
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Places for People |
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Railway Housing Association |
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Riverside |
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St Anthony of Padua Housing Association |
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www.anthonycareservices.org.uk/contact/
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Thirteen |
Data Protection Officer, |
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Tyne Housing Association |
Marie Graham, Data protection Lead |
gdpr@tynegroup.org.uk |
The Information Commissioner (ICO) is also a source of further information about your data protection rights. The ICO is an independent official body and one of their primary functions is to administer the provisions of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation.
You also have a right to lodge a complaint about any aspect of how we are handling your data with the ICO and can do so at the following address:
Online: www.ico.org.uk (http://www.ico.org.uk)
Phone: 0303 123 1113
In writing: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF