Our Responsibilities
When you apply for Breathing Space through a Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) registered debt advisor, your personal details, including some areas of sensitive personal data, will be passed from the Insolvency Service to Conwy County Borough Council, who will processes & store this information.
We are responsible for managing the information we hold & recognise that this information is important to you. We take our responsibilities seriously & will use personal information fairly, correctly & safely in line with the legal requirements set out by current Data Protection legislation.
Anyone who receives information from us is also under a legal duty to do the same & has a set of data protection clauses included in their contract.
As part of your breathing space application, Conwy is required by legislation to ensure all Local Authority systems are reviewed for any qualifying debts that were not declared on your initial Breathing Space application. We are therefore required to correspond with your debt advisor should any further debts be identified by any department within the Local Authority. This data will have been gained from system searches undertaken by a number of departments within the Local Authority, to ensure your debt advisor has knowledge of all qualifying debts in order to accurately assess the best path forward for your financial situation.
Once we receive a breathing space application, all known debts will be set upon the mandatory hold period as specified in legislation.
What we will do with your information
When deciding what personal information to collect, use & hold, we are committed to making sure that we will:
- Only collect, hold & use personal information where it is necessary & fair to do so.
- Be open with you about how we use your information & who we share it with
- Adopt & maintain best practice high standards in handling any personal information
- Keep your personal information secure and safe
- Securely dispose of any personal information when it is no longer needed
We may disclose personal information to a third party, but only where it is required by law, where that third party needs that information to provide you with a service on our behalf or where it is otherwise allowed under the Data Protection legislation. We will strive to make sure that the third party has sufficiently robust systems & procedures in place to protect your personal information.
How long we will hold your information
We will not keep your information any longer than necessary. Our document retention schedules contain information about how long we keep different types of information. When we dispose of personal information, we will do so in a secure way.
Who we may share your information with
Your personal information may be shared within Conwy County Borough Council or with external partners & agencies involved in delivering services on our behalf. They will only have access to your information if it is needed.
The Council may also provide personal information to third parties, but only where it is necessary, either to comply with the law or where permitted under Data Protection legislation.
Your information rights
Under Data Protection legislation you, as the “Data Subject”, have the following rights.
You have the right to:
- Access the information we hold about you
- Request that we rectify any information about you that is incorrect. Simple inaccuracies, such as address changes will be made, however, depending on the purpose for use. Records, including statements & opinions may not be changed, but there will be the option for you to provide a supplementary statement, which will be added to the file
- Request that records we hold about you are erased
- Restrict the use of the information we hold about you if you have raised an objection, whilst your objection is investigated
- Request that any information that you have provided to us is given back to you in a format that you can give to another service provider if required
- Make a complaint to the Information Commissioners Office if you are not satisfied with how the information held about you has been handled
The Prevention, Detection & Investigation of fraud
Conwy County Borough Council is required by law to protect the public funds it administers.
The Auditor General for Wales requires all local authorities under his powers in Part 3A of the Public Audit (Wales) Act 2004, to provide information it holds for this purpose. As public bodies we are under a duty to protect the public funds that we administer & to this end may use any information you may have provided for the prevention, detection & investigation of fraud or to comply with the law.
As well as conducting our own ‘data matching’ exercises we may also share your information with other public bodies. These include (but are not limited to):
- The Auditor General for Wales
- Department for Work & Pensions
- Central & Local Government
- Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC)
- The Police
- NHS
We may also share information with service providers or contractors & partner organisations, where the sharing of information is necessary, proportionate & lawful.
How to access the information we hold about you
You have the right to request a copy of your personal information that we hold about you. If you would like to do so, please contact the Data Protection Officer by email or by post giving us as much detail as possible about the information you require.
Please see the subject access request policy & form.
You will receive a copy of the information held about you along with an explanation of any codes used or other clarification that may be necessary.
Requesting that someone else look at your information on your behalf
You can request that someone else looks at your records on your behalf. To do this you will need to give us consent in writing informing us of who you want to look at the information for you. If a relative or someone else wishes to look at the records of a person who is not able to give their consent, this will only be allowed where it can be shown to be in the best interest of the person concerned.
How to contact us
To exercise any of your rights under the Data Protection legislation please contact us:
If you are not happy with the response you receive from us you have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office:
- by post: ICO Wales, 2nd Floor, Churchill House, Churchill Way, Cardiff, CF10 2HH
- Telephone: 029 2067 8400
- Fax: 029 2067 8399
- Email: wales@ico.org.uk
- Website: ico.org.uk
Equalities information
We may use information such as your ethnic background, first language, gender, sexual orientation & age to gather statistics about the population of the area & the take up of our services. This is to help comply with our legal obligations & to plan the provision of services in the future.
Such analysis will not identify individuals or have impact on entitlement to services & facilities.