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Advance Hardship Fund Privacy Notice

Introduction

Advance Housing and Support Ltd (Advance) is committed to respecting your privacy. This policy explains how Advance may use personal information collected about you for the purposes of the Hardship Fund. This policy explains how Advance complies with the law on data protection and what your rights are. For the purposes of data protection, Advance will be the data Controller of any of your personal information.

This policy applies to all of Advance’s, customers applying to the Hardship Fund. This policy does not form part of any contract.

References to “we,” “our” or “us” in this privacy policy are to Advance. Our address is: 2 Witan Way, Witney, Oxon, OX28 6FH.

Our Data Protection Officer oversees our compliance with data protection legislation. Contact details are in the “Contacting Us” section below.

Personal Data

Advance may require the following personal data from you in order to process your Hardship Fund application:

  • Name
  • Date of Birth
  • Home address
  • E-mail
  • Mobile telephone number (this would be needed for Evouchers)
  • Bank Statements for grants over £50 (to be destroyed upon receipt and checking) 

Special Categories of Personal Information

Advance does not need to process any special categories of personal data for the processing of your Hardship Fund application. 

How We Collect Your Data

Advance collects your personal data when you make an online application. This request is then passed to a Regional Housing Officer (RHO) to review. If you meet the criteria, the RHO will need to see your latest bank statement evidencing that you do not have savings over £500. This is required to prevent the fund from being misused or defrauded. The statement will be destroyed/deleted from our system as soon as this check is complete.

Uses Made of Your Personal Data

Your personal data will be processed to assess your entitlement to the Hardship Fund. Your application will be stored electronically on our system. Paper records will be destroyed as soon as the grant decision has been made.

If your application is successful and you are awarded a grant details of your application and decision will be retained on our system for the duration of your tenancy and deleted as per our retention schedule for former tenants should you move.

Lawful Basis for Processing Your Personal Data

The UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) requires that we must have a lawful basis for all of our processing activities. Our lawful bases are as follows:

  • UK GDPR Article 6(a) – you have given your consent to us processing your data for the purposes of assessing your eligibility for the Hardship Fund.
  • UK GDPR

We do not need to process any special category data about you (such as your health information) for the purpose of assessing your eligibility for the Hardship Fund.

Where you have given us your consent to use your personal information, you have the right to withdraw this consent at any time. You can do this by contacting us as described in the "Contacting us" section below.

Please note that the withdrawal of your consent may affect our ability to assess your application (if you withdraw consent before a decision has been made). Also, withdrawal will not affect any use of the data made before you withdrew your consent, and we may still be entitled to hold and process the relevant personal information, to the extent that we are entitled to, on bases other than your consent.

Disclosure of your Personal Data

We may share your personal data with the following parties:

  • Items will be obtained through existing suppliers but in the case of food and energy vouchers these will be acquired through Wonde Limited (trading as Evouchers) and data will be inputted into their You can also refer to Wonde Privacy Notice.

Transferring Your Data Internationally

We do not undertake transfers of your personal data to any countries outside the United Kingdom 

How Long we Keep Your Personal Data

If your application is successful and you are awarded a grant, details of your application and our decision will be retained on our system for the duration of your tenancy and deleted as per our retention schedule for former tenants should you move.

It is important to ensure that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and up- to-date, and you should let us know if anything changes, for example if you move home or change your phone number or email address. You may be able to update some of the personal information we hold about you by contacting us using the details in the “Contacting Us” section below.

Your Rights in Relation to Personal Data

You have the following rights concerning your data:

Right of Access

You have the right to obtain confirmation from Advance as to whether personal data concerning you are being processed and, where that is the case, access to that data.

Right to Rectification

You have the right to oblige Advance to rectify inaccurate personal data concerning you. Taking into account the purposes of the processing, you have the right to have incomplete personal data completed by providing a supplementary statement.

Right to Erasure

You have the right (under certain circumstances, but not all) to oblige Advance to erase personal data concerning you.

Right to Restriction of Processing

You have the right (under certain circumstances, but not all) to oblige Advance to restrict the processing of your personal data. For example, you may request this if you are contesting the accuracy of personal data held about you.

Right to Data Portability

You have the right (under certain circumstances, but not all) to oblige Advance to provide you with the personal data about you that you have provided to Advance in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format.

You also have a right to oblige Advance to transmit those data to another controller.

Right to Withdraw Consent

If the lawful basis for processing is consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent.

Right to Object to Direct Marketing

Where your personal data are processed for direct marketing purposes, you have the right to object at any time to the processing of your personal data for marketing, which includes profiling to the extent that it is related to such direct marketing.

Rights in Relation to Automated Decision-Making and Profiling

Advance does not perform any automated decision-making based on personal data that produces legal effects or similarly affects you.

You should note that some of these rights, for example the right to require us to transfer your data to another service provider or the right to object to automated decision making, may not apply as they have specific requirements and exemptions which apply to them and they may not apply to personal information recorded and stored by us. For example, we do not use automated decision-making in relation to your personal data. However, some have no conditions attached, so your right to withdraw consent or object to processing for direct marketing are absolute right.

Your Right to Lodge a Complaint with a Supervisory Authority

If you wish to exercise any of your rights concerning your personal data, you should contact Advance’s Data Protection Officer at the address listed in the introduction section. If you are not satisfied with the response you receive, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority. In the United Kingdom, this is:

Information Commissioner’s Office Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow Cheshire SK9 5AF

(t) 0303 123 1113

(e) icocasework@ico.org.uk

While this privacy policy sets out a general summary of your legal rights in respect of personal information, this is a very complex area of law. More information about your legal rights can be found on the Information Commissioner’s website at https://ico.org.uk/for-the- public/

To exercise any of the above rights, or if you have any questions relating to your rights, please contact us by using the details set out in the "Contacting Us" section below.

Changes to This Policy

Advance may update this privacy policy from time to time. When we change this policy in a material way, we will update the version date at the bottom of this page. For significant changes to this policy, we will try to give you reasonable notice unless we are prevented from doing so. Where required by law, we will seek your consent to changes in the way we use your personal information.

Contacting Us

In the event of any query or complaint in connection with the information we hold about you, please write to us at: Advance Housing and Support Ltd, 2 Witan Way, Oxon, OX28 6FH. Our Data Protection Officer, the Head of Governance, can be contacted at this address or by telephone: 0333 012 4307.

Version dated 22/06/2023

Document Owner and Approval

The Data Protection Officer owns this template and is responsible for ensuring that it is reviewed on a regular basis. A current version of this guidance is available on our website.

This guidance was approved by the Data Protection Officer on 22/06/2023 and is issued on a version-controlled basis under his/her authority.

Record of Change History

Issue

Description of Change

Approval

Date of Issue

1

Initial Issue

Data Protection Officer

22/06/2023