This privacy notice tells you what to expect from CCBC when we collect your personal information in relation to CCBC’s Revenue and Benefits Assessment Service.
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, Financial Assessment for Social Care Services, Sundry Debtors and Income Reconciliation and National Non-Domestic Rates
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 for Revenue and Benefits Assessment Service. If you do not provide information we will be unable to deliver a service to you. The billing, collection and enforcement of local taxation (domestic and non-domestic) and other miscellaneous debts as well as the Financial Assessment for Social Care Services, assessment and payment of Housing Benefit and Council Tax Support are 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 support the correct billing and or application for a reduction in Council Tax / Non domestic Rates, the assessment of Housing Benefits / Council Tax Support and the invoicing of other services provided by CCBC as well as the calculation of charge for Social Care services. We may also need information about people who live in the same household as you (non-dependants) when you apply for Housing Benefit/Council Tax Reduction and this is needed to work out your entitlement. The non–dependant data will also be processed.
- 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 our 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:
- Other CCBC Services / Departments for the purpose of Council Enforcement issues where necessary.
- Bodies investigating or processing claims
- Public sector agencies e.g. Department for Work and Pensions, HMRC, other local authorities and private sector companies such as credit reference agencies
- Bodies working to prevent fraud and supporting national fraud initiatives.
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 processing of applications for Housing Benefit / Local Council Tax support or reduction in Council Tax / Non domestic rates as well as the prevention of fraud as below:
- 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.
How to contact us
To exercise any of your rights under the Data Protection legislation please contact us:
Conwy County Borough Council
Bodlondeb
Conwy
LL32 8DU
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 please visit www.conwy.gov.uk/dataprotection and www.conwy.gov.uk/privacynotices these sites can also be used to find our contact details if you have a complaint about your information rights.