Housing Options Scotland is a not-for-profit housing advice and information charity, working nationally and remotely, with a trading address in Edinburgh.
This privacy notice tells you what to expect when Housing Options Scotland collects your personal data. Housing Options Scotland is committed to ensuring that all personal data we hold is processed in accordance with data protection law and that good data protection practice is embedded in the culture of our staff and organisation. This policy will be reviewed regularly by Housing Options Scotland to ensure continued compliance.
Housing Options Scotland is a company limited by guarantee (SC180581) and a registered charity (SC027335).
Our trading address is: The Melting Pot, 15 Calton Road, Edinburgh, EH8 8DL
Telephone: 0131 510 1567
Email: info@housingoptionsscotland.org.uk
Our Data Protection Officer (also our Operations Manager) is Fionn Henshaw.
Housing Options Scotland is a registered data controller (ICO registration Z3221210)
Why do we collect personal data?
We help disabled people, older adults, and members of the Armed Forces community make informed decisions about their housing. To ensure we provide the most accurate advice, we have to collect information (data) from you that will help us understand your circumstances and provide appropriate advice.
How do we collect personal data?
We may collect personal data which has been provided to us directly by you or another person who has completed a Get Help form on your behalf and with your permission.
What data do we collect?
1. Information we collect from you
When you register with Housing Options Scotland, we ask you to provide information through our Get Help form. Here is a list of the information we collect from you, and why.
Your name and contact details: For us to be able to get in touch with you. If someone is contacting us on your behalf, we will also ask for their name and contact details.
Information on your current housing including address, local authority and housing tenure: We ask this so we can provide you with bespoke and personalised advice on your housing options. For example, every local authority has different housing providers.
Date of Birth: We ask this to determine if there is any age-appropriate housing that may be suitable to you.
Name and date of birth of those within your household: To understand what size and type of housing may be appropriate for your family.
Health and financial information: We ask this to help us understand your personal circumstances in order to provide you with personalised advice. We only ask for information and we will never ask for proof or evidence of your financial information.
Which organisations you have registered your housing needs with, including reference numbers for applications: We ask this to see if there are any additional organisations you could register with. With your written permission, we may contact the organisations to ensure your applications are up to date.
The lawful basis for our data processing is your consent. You can withdraw your consent at any time.
2. Visitors to our website
When users enter the Housing Options Scotland website their computers will automatically be issued with ‘cookies’. Cookies are text files which identify users’ computers to the Housing Options Scotland server. The website then creates “session” cookies to store some of the preferences of users moving around the website, e.g., retaining a text-only preference.
The Housing Options Scotland website uses third-party cookies to measure use of the website including number of visitors, how frequently pages are viewed, and the city and country of origin of users. This helps to determine what is popular and can influence future content and development. For this purpose, Housing Options Scotland uses Google Analytics to measure and analyse usage of the website. The information collected by Housing Options Scotland will include IP address, pages visited, browser type and operating system.
The website will prompt you to accept cookies though you do not have to consent to this. To find out more about cookies visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.
3. Personal stories, opinion, interviews etc
We regularly collect and publish stories, videos, photographs, blogs, opinion pieces, interviews and case studies. We may also collect and publish research which may include personal interviews and quotes. Where an individual can be identified, this will only be with express permission to do so.
4. Enquiries and Feedback
If you contact us asking a question or giving feedback, we will collect your email address and any other personal data contained in your message.
If you are asking for information, we may need to contact other bodies to find out the answer for you. In these circumstances, we will not identify you unless you have given us express permission to do so.
5. Surveys and Consultations
We collect names and email addresses from responses we receive to surveys which we occasionally circulate.
Email addresses may be used to send acknowledgements of receipt of response. They may also be used to contact you in the future in relation to the survey or consultation but only if you give consent to be contacted.
6. Events
When you sign up for an event by means of any of our event management platforms we will use your details for the following purposes.
- Processing your registration and preparing for your arrival.
- In some cases, we may also make your name and organisation available on delegate lists circulated to attendees on the day. This would allow for further networking to take place post event. This will not include any contact details unless we have sought your express permission in advance.
- We may also collect a limited amount of health data related to allergies for catering or adjustments required for accessibility.
- In some cases, we may use your contact information to inform you of future relevant events that you may wish to attend. We would only do this if you had indicated your acceptance of this when signing up to the event.
Photographs and videos may be taken at the event and used for publicising the event and the wider Housing Options Scotland portfolio. People attending the event are notified that photographs will be taken and can choose not to participate. If you do not wish to have your image used in this way, please contact our Data Protection Officer as detailed below.
Legal Basis for Processing Your Data
We will process your personal data for the purposes of performing any contract that we have entered into with you personally and in order to take any steps requested by you prior to entering into that contract.
We will process data as required in order to comply with any legal obligation which we are required to comply with and for the performance of tasks carried out in the public interest.
We will also process personal data where we have a legitimate interest to do so, such as:
- to improve our website by monitoring how you use it;
- to respond to any enquiries or feedback you have submitted;
- to record and/or publish your response to a survey, consultation or interview (written and / or recorded);
- where you wish to attend, or have attended, an event; and
- an employee of ours gives your contact details as an emergency contact or a referee.
There may be some occasions where we seek your consent to process personal data. In these cases we will provide full details of what we are seeking consent for, so that you will be able to carefully consider whether to provide that consent. Where you have provided consent to us, you have the right to withdraw that consent by contacting our Operations Manager at info@housingoptionsscotland.org.uk
Please note that where you provide data to us on the basis of a contractual requirement, failure to provide us with the necessary data required may impact our ability to efficiently administer the rights and obligations arising under that contract.
Sharing your data
Your information may be shared internally within Housing Options Scotland as appropriate, to allow us to process data for the purposes set out in this notice.
We may share your information with emergency services for safeguarding reasons (where necessary).
We may share your information with relevant third parties including housing providers, local authority, charities, advisory organisations, in order to support your case, with your express permission.
We will share names and details of the organisation with which you are affiliated or employed by with others who attend events you have also attended or registered to attend. We may also share your data with any event organisers or hosts where you may require special arrangements for your attendance.
We will also share data with associates undertaking services on our behalf (such as commissioned researchers), media contacts and other key stakeholders, where permission is given.
We also share your data with third parties, including third party service providers that process data on our behalf, in connection with data management, analytics and IT services.
In relation to our third-party service providers, we have in place a written contract which only permits them to process your data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions. All of their employees must be subject to a duty of confidentiality. The contract also requires third party service providers to take appropriate security measures in relation to your personal data which are in line with our policies.
We may also share some of your information as statistics through our quarterly and annual reporting, but we do not share this about you as an individual. For example, our report might say “50% of clients are over 55 years old”. Our reports never include your individual personal information, unless you have taken part in a client story/case study and provided written consent to taking part and sharing your personal information.
Your rights
As a data subject, you have a number of rights. These include:
- Subject access: the right to request information about how your personal data is being processed including whether your personal data is being processed and the right to be allowed access to that data and to be provided with a copy of that data.
- Rectification: the right to have us rectify inaccurate personal data about you without undue delay.
- Erasure: the right to have your data erased in certain circumstances, and to have confirmation of erasure.
- Restriction of processing: the right to ask for certain processing to be restricted in limited circumstances.
- Data portability: the right to receive a copy of the personal data you have provided to us and certain information generated by us, if our processing is carried by automated means.
- Object to processing: the right to object, on grounds relating to your particular situation, to certain types of processing.
- Object to automated decision making: if we are making decisions about you based on automated processing which have a legal or similar effect on them, then in some circumstances you have the right to object to this decision being made solely on the basis of automated processing.
In some circumstances we may not be able to comply with your request. This is because some of these rights are conditional and can only be applied in certain circumstances and/or where there is no compelling reason to continue to process your personal data.
If you would like to exercise any of these rights, if you have any concerns about how your personal data is being processed, or to request a copy of our Data Protection Policy please contact Housing Options Scotland via one of the following options:
Contact:
Data Protection Officer
Housing Options Scotland
The Melting Pot, 15 Calton Road, Edinburgh, EH8 8DL
Telephone: 0131 510 1567
Email: info@housingoptionsscotland.org.uk
Storage of information
We take the security of your data seriously. We have internal policies and controls in place to try to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not unlawfully accessed.
In addition, we limit the access that individuals at Housing Options Scotland have to your personal data to those who have a business need to know.
Where we engage third parties to process personal data on our behalf, those third parties do so on the basis of our written instructions to them, they are under a duty of confidentiality and are obliged to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security of data. They are also not allowed to use your personal data for their own purposes.
We have in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and the Information Commissioner’s Office of a personal data breach when legally required to do so.
Retention of Your Data
We are here to support you for as long as you need help from us and will work at a pace that suits you. We will keep your information safe and secure while your case is open in order to provide you with ongoing support. When you no longer require our help or if there is no further advice we can offer, we will close your case. Your information will be deleted after 6 months, in line with GDPR.
If our Housing Options Brokers contact you but have not received any response, they will attempt to contact you again, using your preferred method of contact. If they have not had a response from you after 2 attempts, we will close your case and your information will be destroyed after 6 months.
If you get in touch to review your options within 6 months, we can reopen your case. If we no longer hold your data, we will ask you to complete a new Get Help form to reregister with us.
Updating our Privacy Policy
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post the updated privacy statement to the website and any other places we deem appropriate, e.g., through general communications, so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any we disclose it.
Complaints
If you are dissatisfied by the way in which we process your data, you are entitled to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office at any time via:
The Information Commissioner
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Tel: 0303 123 1113
Website: ico.org.uk