Privacy policy

We will only collect personal information when we need to. The type of information may vary depending on the service(s) you receive.

Most information we hold will be collected from you but we may obtain this from third parties such as the local authority, a previous landlord or other relevant community partners. We may also obtain information from third parties to validate, or where appropriate, enhance the information we hold.

The information we may collect includes, but is not restricted to, the following:
Name
Address, including previous and forwarding addresses
Contact information including email address
Gender
Date of birth
Photographic ID
National  insurance number
Bank details
Employment details
Religion
Sexual orientation
Income
Any state benefits
Marital status and members of your household
Health and care issues
Disabilities
Ethnicity, culture or religion
Criminal activities including anti-social behaviour
CCTV footage
Call recordings from phone calls to our organisation

When you provide information about household members we assume that you do so with their full knowledge. This information is requested as part of a contractual requirement and is in our legitimate interest to know who will be living in our premises. For example we would need to know household details to assess eligibility for housing and the type of accommodation required.

We may hold other information about you for specific purposes for services we provide. We try to ensure information is accurate, up to date and not kept for longer than necessary.
To assist with personal security and crime prevention we may capture your image on our CCTV systems if you visit an office, estate or communal area which is covered by this facility.

Special categories of data include:
Racial or ethnic origin
Sexual orientation
Health information
Religious or Philosophical beliefs

Special category data is used to monitor equality, diversity and inclusion and to ensure services are delivered appropriately.

We require this information to understand your needs and provide you with a better service, and in particular for the following reasons:

Manage applications made by you
Manage your tenancy, lease or other services you have engaged with
Fulfil our legal obligations
Meet your needs in our service delivery
Plan, develop and  improve our products and services
Prevent fraud and illegal sub-letting
To contact you in regard to your request
We may contact you for market research purposes and customer satisfaction surveys to help monitor performance and improve our services.
Information may be used for market/customer research, analysis and developing statistics and we may supply data to third party contractors to deliver services on our behalf for this purpose.

To understand how we are performing we undertake call recording in some of our service areas for training and quality monitoring purposes. We also hold records of any contact we have with you and any contact from third parties representing you.

The organisation does not use any system based automated decision process for any significant processes. You will always be able to query decisions with staff.

We endeavour to keep our records up to date. However, if any of your personal details change (e.g. contact details, household composition) please let us know.

Information will be used across the organisation to ensure you are receiving all services you have requested.

Minimal information will be shared with authorised third party contractors to provide landlord services, for example repairs. Where we need to share personal data with our contractors the relationship is governed by a contract which will include strict data sharing and confidentiality protocols. We only share personal information that is necessary to deliver the service.

We will not provide your information to any unauthorised third parties or share information except where we are required to by law.

Information sharing in our legitimate business interest may include:
Our contractors to carry out landlord services i.e. repairs, maintenance etc.
Local authority teams such as social services, benefit agencies, council tax and environmental health
Utility companies
Third party services acting on our behalf i.e. a mailing company distributing rent statements or a debt collection agency pursuing former tenant arrears
Credit reference agencies for credit reference purposes, fraud, money laundering, prevention and detection of crime, or as part of our debt collection process
Police and other relevant statutory agencies i.e. HM Revenue and Customs, Department of Work & Pensions
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. (DLUHC) as part of the regulatory requirements of CORE (Continuous Recording of social housing lettings and sales) used for research and statistical purposes. DLUHC have their own Privacy Notice which can be found here and where you can find more information about the process and who to contact if you have any concerns.

We may also share information when required by law or to protect the legitimate interest of an individual.

As part of the Rental Exchange Programme and with your consent we share your rental payment history with Experian. This programme allows tenants with a history of little or no credit, who are paying their rent on a regular basis, to build up a credit score. You can opt out of the Rental Exchange Programme at any time by contacting us. Please see the “contact us” section of our website for details of how to get in touch.

If you would like more information you can visit www.experian.co.uk/rental-exchange or call Experian on 0115 941 0888 and ask for a copy of the Rental Exchange brochure.

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect.

To help ensure confidentiality we will ask you, or any person authorised to act on your behalf, security questions to confirm your identity when contact is made. We will not discuss your personal information with anyone other than you unless you have given prior written authorisation (or historically verbal instruction).

Grand Union retains personal information during the period of our relationship and for a set period afterwards to allow us to meet legal obligations.

We document retention schedules against different types of information. This is based on legal requirements, best practice and the National Housing Federation guidance.

If you would like further information please contact our Data Protection Officer [email protected]

Grand Union is committed to upholding your rights in respect of your personal data

The law provides the following rights for individuals:
Right to be informed
The right of access
The right to rectification
The right to erase
The right to restrict processing
The right to data portability
The right to object
Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling

Further information can be found on the Information Commissioner’s Office website:
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/

You have the right to request access to personal information we may hold about you by making a Subject Access Request application. If you would like to do this you can complete the subject access request form or make a written request to our Data Protection Officer at the address provided above.

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