Home-Options Privacy Notice

In order to provide the Home-Options service, it is necessary for the Home-Options partners to collect, store and process personal data relating to housing applicants, tenants and persons at risk of, or who are homeless. Safeguards are in place to ensure that this data is kept secure and the privacy of individuals is protected.

This privacy notice should be read alongside the Partner’s individual privacy notices, which can be found on their websites. You can find details of the Home-Options partners and their websites here: Home-Options Partners.

Who is responsible for your information?

The data controller for your personal information will depend upon whom your housing application is registered with. The prefix of your Home-Options application (the group of 2-4 letters at the beginning of your reference number) will tell you with whom you are registered.

How is your information collected?

As part of the Home-Options service, we may collect information about you in a number of ways, including (but not limited to):

• information you provide to us via an application form, or by fax, letter or email, or face-to-face or over the phone
• information passed to us from an advice agency (with your consent or to protect your vital interests)
• information provided to us by referees, previous landlords, local authorities, the emergency services, social services, government departments, or other agencies you refer us to
• information provided by debt collection agencies or from open source intelligence such as publically accessible social media (including Facebook).

Purposes of processing your personal data

Assessment of eligibility - We process your personal information and that of any household members in order to assess your eligibility to join the housing register, and to determine your housing needs and eligibility for an offer of housing.
Bidding on a property – Your information is used to create a shortlist of applicants for each property, and to assess priority against our allocation policies. If you bid for a property, the information supplied with your application will be shared with the landlord that advertised the property so they can shortlist your application and decide to whom to offer the tenancy.
Prevention and detection of fraud - Information may also be used for the prevention and detection of fraud.

Categories of personal data and lawful basis for processing

In order to provide this service, we may need to process some or all of the following categories of personal information:

• contact details and date of birth
• employment or benefits details
• criminal convictions
• proof of ID (passport, driving licence, birth certificate, etc.)
• information about your housing circumstances and social situation.

Under data protection legislation, processing of this data is allowed because we have a statutory duty to provide a housing allocation service.

Categories of sensitive personal data and lawful basis for processing

In order to provide the Home-Options service, we may need to process some or all of the following categories of sensitive personal information:

• health information
• ethnicity
• religion.

Under data protection legislation, processing of this data is allowed because it is for reasons of substantial public interest.

How your data is stored

The majority of your data will be stored on the Locata system that we use, which stores all the data in the UK. Some data may be stored on the servers of councils or housing associations; their privacy policies will tell you where they store your data and what safeguards are in place.

Who we share your personal data with

We may share applicant information with other agencies in order to best assess the needs of some applicants, or to help you find an appropriate property. We may also receive information from these parties about your application.

These third parties may include other teams within the Home-Options partner with whom you are registered, as well as external organisations, including:

• Derbyshire County Council
• health services
• the Police
• other local authorities and social landlords
• voluntary organisations.

Unless a referral is made for certain safeguarding issues, we will always agree the referral with you first.

As part of the Home-Options partnership, your information may be shared with other local authorities and social landlords if you bid on one of their properties.

If you request a review of a decision we have made about your housing application under the Home-Options review process, your personal information will be passed to managers at another Home-Options partnership organisation so they can carry out an independent review.

Home-Options partners may share information with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), which collects data about social housing lettings for statistical and research purposes (referred to as CORE).  See the DLUHC privacy notice here.

We are required to share housing application data with the Cabinet Office as part of a national data matching exercise to prevent and detect fraud. Please see our Fair Processing Notice below, partner’s own National Fraud Initiative privacy notices, and the Cabinet Office privacy notice, for more details.

Marketing data

Home-Options partners will not use your personal data to market services to you unless you have given your explicit consent to receive such information. This may include information about properties for sale, shared ownership, homes available with private landlords and other housing-related services that may be of use to you in finding accommodation.

If you have given us permission to send you detail of services you have a right to ask us to stop sending information in this way.

Withdrawal of consent

The Data Protection Act gives individuals a right to withdraw consent to the processing of personal data. This does not however apply to regulatory services that we have a legal obligation to provide or when we are fulfilling a contract to deliver a service to you.

Consent can only be withdrawn for services that you have chosen to subscribe to such as electronic newsletters, on-line consultation exercises, promotional emails etc. We will process consent withdrawal requests as soon as we are physically able to do so.

Retention of Personal Data

Home-Options partners will retain your data for a set period of time, according to their individual document retention policies, details of which can be found on their websites: Home-Options Partners.

Visitors to the Home-Options Website

When someone visits our website at http://www.home-options.org we use a third party service - Google Analytics - to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. This process does not identify individuals.

If we do want to collect information about you via our website, such as through our on-line application form or via a survey, we will make it clear to you and explain what we intend to do with the data.

Use of automated decision making

We use automated decision making on our online application form to help determine who is eligible for an offer of accommodation, which in turn determines whether someone is eligible and qualifies to join the housing register.

The automated decision making includes eligibility for housing based upon residence in the UK, and qualification to join the housing register for applicants who have been rehoused in the last two years and certain categories of owner-occupiers.

We can do this because we are authorised by law to determine who is eligible for an offer of housing in the UK under Part 6 of the Housing Act 1996 (as amended), and because the Localism Act 2011 allows us to set qualifying criteria for people wishing to register for housing.

If you disagree with the decision, you have a right to ask us for a review. See the Home-Options review procedure for further information.

Access to your own personal data

The Home-Options partners will try to be as open as possible in terms of giving people access to their personal data. Individuals can find out if the Home-Options partners hold any personal data by making a Subject Access Request under the Data Protection Act.

Deletion of personal data

You have a right under certain circumstances to ask a Home-Options partner to remove the data that they hold on you. However some services that we Council provide are regulatory or statutory services which require data to be retained. As such, all requests to have data removed will be dealt with on their individual merit.

Privacy Notice review

This Privacy Notice will be kept under regular review to ensure that it is fit for purpose.

Data Protection Officers

Each Home-Options partner will have a designated data protection officer, details of which should be found on their websites: Home-Options Partners.

Further information

Please get in touch if you would like more information about how your personal data is processed.

You can find contact information for the relevant Home-Options partner here: Home-Options Partners Contact Information.

Further information on data protection can be found on the Information Commissioner’s website at https://ico.org.uk.

Fair Processing Notice

The partners that provide the Home-Options service are required by law to protect the public funds we administer. We may share information provided to us with other bodies responsible for auditing or administering public funds, in order to prevent and detect fraud.

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.

The National Fraud Initiative (NFI) currently requires us to participate in a data matching exercise to assist in the prevention and detection of fraud. We are required to provide particular sets of data to the NFI for matching.  For information describing which datasets are matched by the Cabinet Office, please refer to the Cabinet Office’s guidance at http://www.gov.uk/government/publications/code-of-data-matching-practice-for-national-fraud-initiative. 

The processing of data by the Cabinet Office in a data matching exercise is carried out with statutory authority; it does not require the consent of the individuals concerned under the Data Protection Act 1998.

For further information on the NFI including fair processing, go to:  https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-fraud-initiative 

Review Date: 30 June 2023