Benefits privacy notice

This privacy notice sits beneath the council’s top level privacy notice and provides information about how personal data is used by our benefits and homeless prevention service to administer your:

• Housing Benefit application
• Council Tax Reduction application

Why we collect data

We need information so that we can assess your entitlement to Housing Benefit and or Council Tax Reduction. We use this information so that we can:

• ensure that you receive the correct amount of Housing Benefit
• ensure that you receive the correct amount of Council Tax Reduction
• administer and make decisions about applications for Discretionary Housing Payments
• recover overpaid Housing Benefit
• guard against identity fraud and error for any of the above

Where we share your data

We can share information collected as part of your Housing Benefit or Council Tax Reduction applications with other departments in the council, other local authorities, the Department for Work and Pensions and in some circumstances with your landlord and other organisations.

We only share your data for the following reasons:

• to help an application that you might make to another council service. This includes if you’ve applied for:
  • a Blue Badge
  • a Disabled Facilities Grant
  • a Discretionary Housing Payment
  • help with non-statutory assistance (better known as supporting people
    services)
  • residential care
  • domiciliary care – such as day care, home help and meals
• to help identify and support people who are at risk of becoming homeless
• to help identify families who may benefit from the Supporting Families Programme (previously Troubled Families Programme)
• to help people living in a council or Housing Association property who will be affected by the benefit cap and or under occupation in the social sector. By telling another part of the council or your landlord, they will be able to advise you on what you should do next and provide you with any assistance they can
• if the Department for Work and Pensions or HM Revenues and Customs asks us to share your information with them (we must do this by law)
• if you are awarded Housing Benefit or Discretionary Housing Payment and we pay this directly to your landlord we will share details about:
  • the amount of the weekly award
  • any changes to the amount of the award
  • the dates that a payment covers
  • when the direct payments stop (once we stop direct payments we won’t share any further details)
  • any overpayments of the payments they have received
  • any sundry debt invoices they have been sent, to recover overpayments they received
• if you have agreed that we can give information about the progress of your claim to your landlord

How long we keep your data for

See our privacy statement for more information on how long we keep your data for.

Your rights

See our privacy statement for who to contact about the use of your personal data, and for details on your right to:

• be informed
• access your personal data
• change your personal data if it is incorrect
• restrict our processing of your personal data

If you find that the information we hold on you is incorrect, let us know as soon as possible so we can update our records.