This privacy notice tells you what to expect from the Council Tax Team at CCBC when we collect your personal information in relation to the billing and collection of Council Tax.
The Revenue and Benefits Assessment Service includes the following sections: Business Improvement District (BID’s) Levy, Council Tax, Council Tax Support, Document Imaging Processing (DIP’s), Enforcement Agents, Housing Benefits Assessment, Sundry Debtors and Income Reconciliation and National Non-Domestic Rates, each section has its own specific privacy notice, which you will find by following the links detailed later on in this notice.
The Council is required by law to protect the public funds it administers and so may use any information you have provided for the prevention, detection and investigation of fraud and irregularity, for the performance of a contract, or, task carried out in the public interest, or to comply with a legal obligation. Part 6 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 and the Accounts and Audit (Wales) Regulations are the Legal basis.
Purpose for processing and legal basis for processing your personal information
- Service delivery If you do not provide information requested we will be unable to deliver a service to you. The billing, collection and enforcement of Council Tax is a statutory responsibility of CCBC. In order to enable CCBC to carry out its duty / obligations is it necessary for us to collect personal information from you, including your name, address, contact details, date of birth, financial information and other personal information to ensure CCBC have the correct details to be able to create an accurate Council Tax bill, ensuring it is issued to the correct liable person, at the correct address, and that the recovery of the council tax, should payments in accordance with the demand notice not be received, is attainable once relevant legislative processed have been followed.
Your contact data may at times be used by the Council Tax team to contact you to promote the service and offer updates on available payment methods.
- Service improvement, service planning/research within. We will use your information to improve the service to you, and where possible so it does not identify you. If you object to us using your personal information, please contact us.
- Prevention/Detection of Crime/Fraud. The Serious Crime Act 2007 allows public authorities to disclose information for the purposes of preventing fraud, as a member of a specified anti-fraud organisation or otherwise in accordance with any arrangements made with such an organisation.
Who we share your information with
We work with a range of other organisations to either store personal information or to help us deliver out services to you. We may also share your personal information when we feel there is a good reason to do so that is more important than protecting your privacy. As an example we may share your information in order to find and stop crime and fraud.
Those that we share your information with are:
We also need to share your information with Data Processors. A data processor is a company or organisation that processes personal data on our behalf. Our data processors act only upon our instruction. They cannot do anything with the personal data unless we instruct them to do so. They will not share the personal data with any organisation apart from us or use it for their own purposes. They will hold it securely and retain it for the period we instruct.
The categories of data processors we use for the purpose of administering Local Taxations are:
- Printing companies – (currently FDM for annual billing / Internal for day to day printing) to print, pack and post council tax documents.
- Software provider – (currently Capita Software Services Ltd) to maintain our council tax systems.
- Data analysis – (currently Datatank Ltd) – for purposes of reviewing entitlement to discounts and reliefs.
Retention period or criteria used to determine the retention period
We will retain your personal information in accordance with the retention periods contained in the Councils Data / Document Retention Policies for each data area collected.
All telephone calls received and made through the Revenue and Benefits Assessment Service landlines are recorded for training and monitoring purposes. The recordings of these calls will be retained for 90 days
The sources the personal data originates from and whether it came from publicly accessible sources
Personal information mainly originates from the customer but can be provided by other sources on an individual basis eg Letting Agents, Solicitors, Landlords, internal departments of the Council, or other third parties when a property is occupied / vacated.
Information is also provided by other bodies to assist with the assessment of council tax liabilities and to assess any reductions or discounts that may be applicable:
- Department of Work and Pensions
- Valuation Office Agency
- HM Revenues and Customs
- Pension Service
- Credit Reference Agencies
- Other local authorities
Where the provision of personal data is part of a statutory or contractual requirement or obligation and possible consequences of failing to provide the personal data
We have a statutory duty to provide these services to you and to use and disclose your personal information in the manner described in this privacy notice, therefore the consequences of you failing to provide your personal information is that we can no longer comply with our statutory duty.
The existence of automated decision making, including profiling and information about how decisions are made, the significance and the consequences
Some of the systems CCBC Revenue and Benefits Assessment Service use will use the data supplied for automated decision making. You have the right to object to any automated decision and request that a ‘human’ member of staff makes the decision instead.
Changes to this privacy notice
We keep our privacy notice under regular review. This privacy notice was last updated April 2018.
Your information rights
To see Conwy’s overall privacy notice, and to view the Revenue and Benefits general Privacy notice, please visit www.conwy.gov.uk/dataprotection and www.conwy.gov.uk/privacynotices these pages can also be used to find our contact details.