This Privacy Notice explains how we use the information that we collect about you.
Housing Services collect, process and hold your personal information to deliver housing services effectively and to meet strategic and statutory responsibilities.
Housing Services has a duty to provide these services under the:
- Local Government and Housing Act 1989
- Housing (Scotland) Acts of 1987, 2001, 2006, 2014
- Homelessness etc. (Scotland) Act 2003
- Tenement (Scotland) Act 2004
- Rent (Scotland) Act 1984
- Digital Economy Act 2017
- Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017
- Property Factoring Scotland Act 2011
- Adult Support & Protection Act 2007
- Immigration and Asylum Act 1999
- Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 (Licensing of Short-term Lets) Order 2022
Housing Services uses personal information provided by you to assist with delivering and providing a range of housing services.
We collect and process personal data for the purposes of:
- Assessing Fife Housing Register applications for Fife Council housing tenancies and those of Registered Social Landlord partners
- Managing current rent accounts including former tenant arrears
- Assessing homelessness applications and managing homelessness accommodation
- Managing factoring services and charges for multi tenure properties
- Assessing the requirement for housing adaptations and other specific housing needs requirements
- Planning and managing a repairs, maintenance and improvement service
- Planning and managing services for new affordable housing
- Managing housing services for offenders
- Managing anti-social behaviour
- Managing gypsy travellers sites and accommodation
- Managing accommodation for refugees and asylum seekers
- Registering private sector landlords and enforcing the Private Landlord Registration scheme
- Assessing the requirement for and management of housing support
- Advising and assisting with referrals to partner organisations
- Assessing short-term Let (STL) licence applications and operating the STL licensing scheme
- Customer engagement and tenant participation activity including events, consultations, surveys and publications.
- Assessing HMO licence applications and operating the HMO licensing regime.
We also use your information provided to us by UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) and the COSLA Strategic Migration Partnership as part of the overseas resettlement arrangements in Scotland in conjunction with the Home Office.
The personal information we process includes name, address, contact details, including email address and telephone numbers and date of birth. Other categories may include, address history, gender, age, disability, ethnicity, religion, NI number, criminal convictions, medical and financial information.
For resettlement applications we also process:
- Information gathered by UNHCR or Home Office for the purpose of Resettlement
- Other household members ages, dates of birth and sex
- Information on pre-existing medical conditions or ongoing medical needs
- Faith of the household
At times we will share your information with other council services e.g. Social Work, Education and Communities. We may also share with external partners and organisations e.g. Scottish Government, Police Scotland, Fire Scotland, NHS Fife, other local authorities, energy companies, support services and Registered Social Landlords. We will also provide some of your information to our contractors and suppliers to enable us to deliver our services.
We may at times receive information about you from other sources these include; other local authorities, NHS, Police Scotland, partner services, support providers, UNHCR, Ministry of Defence/Home Office, the COSLA Strategic Migration Partnership, Registered Social Landlords and from yourself directly.
We also obtain information about you from publicly accessible sources these include; Registers of Scotland, the voters roll and Fife.gov.uk.
On occasion we will gather information about third parties relevant to you, these include dependants, household details, next of kin, parents, power of attorney.
In the event that we did not obtain and use this information then it would not be possible to carry out our statutory functions and provide housing services.
Housing Services does not use any automated decision making or profiling tools.
The Council will not keep your information for longer than is necessary. In some instances the law sets the length of time information has to be kept. The Council has a retention schedule which sets out how long we hold different types of information. This can be found here.
Further information on how your information is used and why can be found at fife.gov.uk/privacy. The Council's Data Protection Officer can be contacted at: dataprotection@fife.gov.uk.