We are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. Through this Privacy notice we have sought to be as transparent as possible and fully explain how your personal data is held and processed.
This privacy notice applies to services provided by Resident Experience’s Contact Centre and tells you what to expect us to do with your personal information.
If you have any questions about this privacy notice or any concerns about how we process your data, please email customerservice@hounslow.gov.uk or call 020 8583 2000. The privacy notice will continue to be monitored and updated. You are advised to check this page from time to time.
Information we collect
We currently collect and process the following information:
- Contact details – name, address, email address, telephone number
- Date of birth
- Proof of identity
- National insurance number
- Services you receive
- Financial details for purposes of making payments
- Housing information relating to your council tenancy
- IP address (if using our website)
We may also collect special categories of personal data that may include ethnic group or gender. It will only be necessary to collect this type of information where it is of relevance to the request you are making.
How we get your information
Most of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by you for one of the following reasons:
- You may give us your personal data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email, and web chat.
- You may provide personal data when you sign up to enquire about council provided service, request information, complete a survey, give us feedback or make a compliant.
If it is not disproportionate or prejudicial, we’ll contact you to let you know we are processing your personal information.
Our lawful basis for processing your information
The lawful basis we rely on for processing this information is
- Consent – the individual has given clear consent for you to process their personal data for a specific purpose
- Public task
You can remove your consent at any time by contacting customerservice@hounslow.gov.uk
Why we need your information (purposes of processing)
The personal data we collect will be used for the following purposes:
- Where you have consented to the processing
- To ensure we meet our legal requirements
- To allow us to communicate and provide services appropriate to your needs
- To process financial transactions
- Where necessary to protect citizens from harm or injury
- To conduct statistical analysis that allows us to target and plan the provision of services
- To identify residents/users for the purpose of notifying them of proposed or planned changes to services that may affect them
- To assist the Council in responding to emergencies or major accidents. This allows the Council, in conjunction with emergency services, to identify citizens who need additional support
- To carry out public task
- To invite customers to provide feedback, to improve services provided by the Council
If you have called our contact centre, you may be contacted by text message to provide feedback. This message will invite you to complete a short anonymous survey. The survey link will remain valid for 7 days, and customers will not be texted a survey more than once within a month.
The information you provide through the survey will tell us about your recent experience with the contact centre. We will only use this information to improve how we deliver our services and to make changes where you felt you did not receive the quality of service you were expecting.
The lawful basis we rely on for processing your information through this survey is Public Task through the Local Government Act 1999 Section 3 and Localism Act Section 1.
Customers are able to opt out of the survey by either informing the officer on the phone that they do not want to receive a text for this purpose, or by texting ‘STOP’ to the survey invitation.
Please note phone calls to our customer service team may be recorded for training and quality improvement services.
Who your information may be shared with (internally and externally)
We share your information with:
- Internal services to carry out a task
- GovMetric – this is a third party survey provider who may process your mobile number
- GovNotify – this is a text messaging service provided by the Government Digital Service
- 8x8 – this is our telephony system
There will be times when we are under a legal duty to share information. This includes, but is not limited to:
- disclosure under a court order
- sharing with the Ministry of Justice for inspection purposes
- sharing with the police for the prevention or detection of crime
- where there is an overriding public interest to prevent abuse or serious harm to others
- disclosure to a Regulator if we identify a situation of potential misconduct or if the information is requested
We will strive to ensure that any personal data in our care will be kept safe and that where your information is disclosed to a third party working on our behalf, we will seek to ensure that they have sufficient systems and procedures in place to prevent the loss or damage of personal data.
How long we keep your information
We keep record of your phone call for 30 days, and record of your email for 12 months.
We will then dispose your information in the most secure manner possible.
If you have opted out of the Resident Experience contact centre survey, then your mobile number will be kept in order to maintain your preference. Note that it will be stored in a secure file.
Business intelligence, profiling and analysis
We may analyze your personal information to improve the council’s services for the following purposes:
- undertake statutory functions efficiently and effectively
- service planning by understanding your needs and your community's needs and to provide the services that you or your community request
- understanding what we can do for you and your community and inform you of other relevant services and benefits
- help us to build up a picture of how we are performing at delivering services to you and what services the people of Hounslow need
- analysis of costs and spend of services we provide so that we can ensure better and efficient use of public funds
The council is committed to using pseudonymised or anonymised information where practical, and in many cases this will be the default position.
Pseudonymisation is a procedure by which the most identifying fields within a data record are replaced by one or more artificial identifiers, or pseudonyms. There can be a single pseudonym for a collection of replaced fields or a pseudonym per replaced field. An example of this is your National Insurance number or Council Tax Reference number.
Anonymisation is the process of removing identifying particulars or details. This means that the data cannot be linked back to identify you.
Data matching and Auditing
We are required by law to protect the public funds we administer. We may use the information you provide to us for the prevention and detection of crime. We may also share this information with other bodies that are responsible for auditing or administering public funds including the Department for Work and Pensions, other local authorities, HM Revenue and Customers and the Police.
The council uses data matching as a way of processing large volumes of information. While this can be a useful way of detecting fraud, it also enables us to identify information that is inaccurate or out of date, helping us comply with Data Protection law, while improving service provision.
As part of the council’s fraud prevention and detection activities, the council participates in the National Fraud Initiative (NFI). The data matching exercise is run by the Cabinet Office. You can find more information about this at the link below:
National Fraud Initiative (NFI) | Data protection | London Borough of Hounslow
Your data protection rights
The rights available to you depend on our reason for processing your information. For further information about your data protection rights and how to make a request, please see ‘Your rights’.
Your right to make a complaint
The Council tries to meet the highest standards when collecting and using personal information. For this reason, we take any complaints we receive about this very seriously. We encourage people to bring it to our attention if they think that our collection or use of information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate.
If you want to make a complaint you can contact us on:
Complaints Team
London Borough of Hounslow
Hounslow House,
7 Bath Road,
TW3 3EB
Data protection officer
The Council’s Data Protection Officer can be contacted on:
InformationGovernance@hounslow.gov.uk
Information Governance Team
London Borough of Hounslow
Hounslow House,
7 Bath Road,
TW3 3EB
Information commissioner's office
The Information Commissioner is the UK's independent body set up to uphold information rights.
If you would like to know more about your rights under the Data Protection law, and what you should expect, visit the Information Commissioner’s website: https://ico.org.uk/
If you have any concerns regarding any privacy practices or about exercising your Data Protection rights, you may contact the Information Commissioner’s Office:
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Telephone: 0303 123 1113 or 01625 545 745
Email: casework@ico.org.uk
A full list of what information we control and process and for what purposes is set out in our notification with the Information Commissioner's Register of Data Controllers. Our registration number is Z5761176. You can view our registration on the Information Commissioner's website.
