Privacy notice - Welfare benefits service

Privacy notice to all welfare benefits service users - collecting and retaining personal information.

Loretto Housing Association will be the "data controllers" of the personal information that you provide to us in order for us to offer welfare benefits services to you.

Loretto forms part of the Wheatley Group.

Our Data Protection Officer is Ranald Brown who can be contacted on #wheatleydataprotectionofficer@wheatley-group.com.

What we need

We collect or obtain your personal information in order to provide you with accurate advice and to carry out case work. We need to keep records in order to manage case work effectively and for quality assurance purposes. We process your personal information for this purpose using our AdvicePro case management system.

The information we require from you in order to offer welfare benefits assistance includes:

  • your full name (and proof of your identity/photo ID);
  • your date of birth;
  • your contact details (phone, email or correspondence address);
  • details of anyone authorised to act on your behalf if applicable;
  • basic details (name and DOB) of all household residents including any children;
  • employment details;
  • financial information, including income, savings and benefit entitlement;
  • health information; and
  • your National Insurance number.

How we collect your personal information

We collect your personal information from you via a variety of sources. You might give us your personal data yourself when you become a tenant or when you ask us for welfare benefits advice. We might also receive your data from other agencies or local authorities.

Why we need your personal information- consent

We process your personal information with your consent in order provide you with welfare benefits services, which may include:

  • welfare benefits advice;
  • appeals/tribunal representation;
  • signposting to other services; and
  • income maximisation.

We will ask you to sign a mandate which gives your authority for your welfare benefits advisor to act on your behalf. You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us on 0800 952 9292. You should be aware that should you choose to do so we will no longer be able to act on your behalf in relation to welfare benefit matters.

Who we share your personal information with

Sharing information with other organisations will help us to represent you more effectively. These organisations might include the following:

  • DWP;
  • Local authority – housing benefit and council tax;
  • NHS health professionals;
  • Court/tribunal service;
  • HMR; and
  • Social Security Scotland.

In the event that we do share personal information with external third parties, we will only share information strictly required for the specific purposes and take reasonable steps to ensure that recipients process the disclosed personal information in accordance with those purposes.

We also share limited personal data with our contractors who are carrying out services on our behalf including but not restricted to:

  • provide a language translation service if it is necessary to translate any information into or from a foreign language for you;
  • carry out research, survey and segmentation on our behalf to help us to improve the services we offer to you;
  • maintain our AdvicePro case management system; and
  • professional and legal advisors for the purposes of taking advice.

Our contractors are required to comply with the law and our own Data Processing Agreement or Data Processing Clauses within our contracts to ensure data is managed appropriately and for specified purposes.

We may need to share personal information with our auditors in order to monitor the outcomes of our welfare benefits service.

We will only share information on the basis of your consent or in accordance with UK data protection legislation.

How we protect your personal information

Your personal information is stored on our paper and IT filing systems which may be copied for testing, backup, archiving and disaster recovery purposes. Access to your information is limited to those who require it to provide services to you. All data is held within the European union (EU).

Our case management system is called AdvicePro. You can access privacy information about it at the AdvicePro website: www.advicepro.org.uk/privacy-policy/

If any of your personal information is transferred out with the EU or the European Economic Area by any of our contractors we will ensure that there are adequate safeguards in place to protect your personal information in accordance with Data Protection Legislation.

How long we keep your personal information

We will only keep your personal information for as long as necessary to provide you with welfare benefits advice.

We have a data retention schedules that set out the periods for retaining and reviewing all information that we hold. You can find our retention schedules in our publication scheme on our website. You can request a copy of this document by contacting us at InformationRequests@wheatley-group.com

Your rights

You can exercise any of the following rights by writing to us at InformationRequests@wheatley-group.com

Your rights in relation to your personal information are:

  • you have a right to request access to the personal information that we hold about you by making a "subject access request";
  • if you believe that any of your personal information is inaccurate or incomplete, you have a right to request that we correct or complete your personal information;
  • you have a right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal information for specific purposes; and
  • if you wish us to delete your personal information, you may request that we do so.

Any requests received by us will be considered under applicable UK Data Protection Legislation. If you remain dissatisfied, you have a right to raise a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office at www.ico.org.uk

We seek to ensure that our information collection and processing is always proportionate. The accuracy of our information is important to us - please help us keep our records updated by informing us of any changes to your personal information.

Changes to our privacy notice

Our privacy notice is regularly kept up to date and this version was updated on 27 January 2021. The latest full version is always available from our website.