Who we are:
Dundee City Council is a local authority established under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994. Its head office is located at City Square, Dundee, DD1 3BY and you can contact our Data Protection Officer by post at this address, by email at: infogov@dundeecity.gov.uk, and by telephone on 01382 434206.
Why do we need your personal information and what do we do with it?
You are giving us your personal information to allow us to administer and assess entitlement to Housing Benefit and/or Council Tax Reduction. We also use your information to verify your identity where required, contact you by post, email or telephone and to maintain our records.
Legal basis for using your information:
We provide these services to you as part of our statutory function as your local authority. You can find more details of our role on our website at www.dundeecity.gov.uk/benefits and www.dundeecity.gov.uk/ctr. Processing your personal information is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the council is subject, for example The Housing Benefit & Housing Benefit (State Pension Credit) Regulations 2006 and the Council Tax Reduction (Scotland) Regulations 2012.
If you do not provide us with the information we have asked for then we will not be able to provide this service to you.
We also need to process more sensitive personal information about you for reasons of substantial public interest as set out in the Data Protection Act 2018. It is necessary for us to process it to carry out key functions as set out in law.”
Who do we share your information with?
We are legally obliged to safeguard public funds so we are required to verify and check your details internally for fraud prevention. We may share this information with other public bodies (and also receive information from these other bodies) for fraud checking purposes. We are also legally obliged to share certain data with other public bodies and government agencies and will do so where the law requires this. We will also generally comply with requests for specific information from other regulatory and law enforcement bodies where this is necessary and appropriate. Your information is also analysed and may be shared internally with, for example, Council Tax, Debt Management and Education Benefits in order to help us improve our services. This data sharing is in accordance with our Information Use and Privacy Policy and covered in our full privacy statement on our website. It also forms part of our requirements in line with our Records Management Plan approved in terms of the Public Records (Scotland) Act 2011.
How long do we keep your information for?
We only keep your personal information for the minimum amount of time necessary. Sometimes this time period is set out in the law, but in most cases it is based on the business need.
We will keep your data for 7 years, after which we will delete or destroy your details securely.
Your rights under data protection law:
- Access to your information – you have the right to access the information we hold on you. There are two ways to access your data:
Subject Access Request: you have the right to request a copy of the personal information that we hold about you.
Data Portability: you can ask us for a copy of your information so that you can re-use it and we will provide it in a machine-readable format. This is a qualified right, which means it only applies in certain circumstances and only relates to information you have given directly to us. - Correcting your information – we want to make sure that your personal information is accurate, complete and up to date. Therefore you may ask us to correct any personal information about you that you believe does not meet these standards.
- Deletion of your information – you have the right to ask us to delete personal information about you where:
- You think that we no longer need to hold the information for the purposes for which it was originally obtained.
- We are using that information with your consent and you have withdrawn your consent
- You have a genuine objection to our use of your personal information.
- Our use of your personal information is contrary to law or our other legal obligations.
Restricting how we may use your information – in some cases, you may ask us to restrict how we use your personal information. This right might apply, for example, where we are checking the accuracy of personal information that we hold about you or we are assessing the objection you have made to our use of your information. This right might also apply if we no longer have a basis for using your personal information but you don't want us to delete the data. Where this right is realistically applied will mean that we may only use the relevant personal information with your consent, for legal claims or where there are other public interest grounds to do so.
Please contact us as stated above if you wish to exercise any of these rights.
Information you have given us about other people:
If you have provided anyone else’s details on this form, please make sure that you have told them that you have given their information to Dundee City Council. We will only use this information to assess your own entitlement to this service. If they want any more information on how we will use their information they can visit our webpage or email infogov@dundeecity.gov.uk.
Complaints:
We aim to directly resolve all complaints about how we handle personal information. However, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office, who can be contacted by post at: Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF. By phone on 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745. Visit the Information Commissioner's website for more information.
More information:
For more details on how we process your personal information visit our Privacy Statement.