Privacy Notice - Tenants' Home Contents Insurance

Please read the following Privacy Notice carefully.

Why we are collecting your data

Basildon Borough Council needs to collect your personal data so that we can provide a specialist contents insurance policy for tenants.

Information collected

• Name and Contact Details

• Age

• Sex

• Family Details

• Signature

• Criminal Records

• Rent account balance

This information is required to establish whether tenants are eligible to purchase the insurance cover, to provide the insurance company with the information required to put the cover in place and to add the weekly premium to the tenants rent account for collection.

This information is also required to cancel the policy either at the tenants request or at the request of the rent accounting team if the tenant is in an unacceptable level of arrears.

The data is collected through

• Application forms received either by post or electronically from the Councils website.

• E-mails from the Housing Rent accounting team

The basis for the processing

This task is carried out because of:

• Contract: the processing is necessary for a contract between the tenant and the insurer, or because there are necessary steps before the tenant enters a contracts with the insurer. It can only be delivered via Basildon Council.

• Public task: the processing is necessary for the Council to perform a task in the public interest or for the Council's official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law.

• To support business needs and to enable the Insurance section to deliver the service

Who your information will be shared with

• Rent Accounting Team

• Current broker of the scheme

• Current insurance company of the scheme.

• The administrators of Lilac Lite, the IT system used to process the scheme

• We have arrangements with a range of IT providers who support the Council's IT systems and services, therefore your data may be accessed by these suppliers. Where we have these arrangements there is always a contractual agreement with them to ensure they comply with the Data Protection Law.

We will never sell your data, however it will be shared with third parties to:

• Comply with legal obligations and legislative requirements

• Help business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors to deliver any contract we enter with them or you

• To help prevent fraud and/or tackle crime

• To improve and optimise the performance of our services

Provide accurate information

We need to hold accurate and up to date information about you so that we can deliver appropriate services. If any of your details change, you need to tell us as soon as possible so that we can update your records.

We will not:

• Use your information for marketing or sales purposes without your prior explicit consent.

• Send or store your data abroad unless it meets the requirements of the Data Protection regulations

• Make decisions about you based on automated processing.

How long will we hold your data for?

We will keep all paper records relating to the contents insurance policy for two years and all electronic information for seven years.

Your rights

You have the right to access the personal information we hold about you.  Any access requests are free of charge.
If the information we hold about you is inaccurate, you have a right to have this corrected and you have the right to request completion of incomplete data.
You have the right to ask us to erase your personal data in certain circumstances ('right to be forgotten').

You have the right to ask us to stop or restrict the processing of your personal data, in certain circumstances. Where possible, we will seek to comply with your request, but we may need to hold or process information to comply with a legal requirement.

You can make any of these requests by:

• Submitting a Freedom of Information request online

• Phone: 01268 533333

• Letter to:

If you are dissatisfied with how we have used your personal information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, by:

• Email: casework@ico.org.uk (opens new window)

• Phone: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745

• Letter to:

Further independent advice about data protection, privacy and data sharing issues is available from the Information Commissioner's Office, see:

• Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) (opens new window).