Council Tax Liability, Discount, Exemption or Reduction and or Housing Benefit Privacy Statement

Who we are

Glasgow City Council is a local authority established under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994. Its head office is located at City Chambers, George Square, Glasgow G2 1DU, United Kingdom. Details for our Data Protection Officer are provided below.

Why do we need your personal information and what do we do with it?

This notice is for customers who have given us their personal information or alternatively where we have received the names and addresses from a:

• Housing Association
• Management Agent
• Solicitor
• Outgoing Owner or tenant
• Other Local Authorities
• Glasgow City Assessor
• Debt Management Partners
• Police Scotland
• Universities/Colleges
• Department for Work and Pensions
• HMRC

To allow us to:

• Compile and maintain the Council Tax List in accordance with the Local Government Finance Act 1992 and related legislation applying to Council Tax, as well as,
• Process a claim for Housing Benefit or Council Tax Reduction or a notification of a change in circumstances for either, in accordance with the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 and related legislation to Housing Benefit and Council Tax.
• Answer queries from individuals and customers on Council tax and Housing Benefit matters.
• To process Council tax payments.

We will also use the personal information in pursuit of Council Tax Payment and/or in relation to Housing Benefit administration where an application is received for:

• Council Tax Discount,
• Council Tax Reduction or
• Council Tax Exemption
• Housing Benefit

to assess eligibility and award it if entitled.

We may communicate with you and collect personal information through different methods of contact including

• Telephone
• Email
• Online forms
• Online Webchat

We will use the personal information where we are notified of a change in personal circumstances which may affect entitlement to Housing Benefit and or Council Tax Discount, Exemption or Reduction.

As part of the Council's ongoing work to support financial inclusion and tackle poverty in the city, we will use the information to identify whether you may be entitled to Housing Benefit or to other Department of Work & Pensions benefit such as Attendance Allowance, Carers Allowance, State Pension Credit, etc. and encourage or assist you to make such a claim or provide advice in relation to such a claim.

Where applicable we will use the personal information provided to allow us to also assess eligibility to School Clothing Grants, Education Maintenance Allowance, Free School Meals and Best Start Grant and award if eligible.

Where possible, new IT systems and the development of existing IT systems will make use of system generated or anonymised data in test environments. However, there may be circumstances in which test environments, their users and their developers appointed by Glasgow City Council, such as CGI, may be required to utilise your personal data in a test environment. In such circumstances, Glasgow City Council require that development and test activity comply with data protection legislation, taking reasonable steps to protect your personal data.

We will use your information to verify your identity where required, contact you by post, email or telephone and to maintain our records.

We may 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.

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.glasgow.gov.uk/privacy. Processing your personal information is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest by the council. 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.

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, such as HMRC 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. We may share your information with your Landlord, Department for Work & Pensions, Pension Services, Rent Service Scotland, TransUnion, Neighbouring Councils, Glasgow City Assessor and Electoral Registration Officer, Mag: Net Solutions, Scott & Co and Walker Love in relation to Council Tax Payment, Council Tax Benefit Claim and or Housing Benefit Claim.  Your information is also analysed internally 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 period amount of time necessary. Sometimes this time period is set out in law, but in most cases it is based on the business need. We maintain a records retention and disposal schedule which sets out how long we hold different types of information for. You can view this on our website at www.glasgow.gov.uk/rrds

or you can request a hard copy from the contact address stated above.

Where you make use of the webchat function on the Council's website, encrypted transcripts are retained for a period of 16 months.

Your rights under data protection law

• Access to your information - you have the right to request a copy of the personal information that we hold about you.
• 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:

I.  You think that we no longer need to hold the information for the purposes for which it was originally obtained

II.  You have a genuine objection to our use of your personal information - see Objecting to how we may use your information below

III.  Our use of your personal information is contrary to law or our other legal obligations.

Objecting to how we may use your information - You have the right at any time to tell us to stop using your personal information for direct marketing purposes.

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 Glasgow City Council. We will only use this information to contact those people where necessary to assess your own entitlement to a Council Tax Discount, Exemption, Reduction and or Housing Benefit. If they want any more information on how we use their information they can visit our web site at www.glasgow.gov.uk/privacy or email dataprotection@glasgow.gov.uk

Complaints

We aim to directly resolve all complaints about how we handle personal information. If your complaint is about how we have handled your personal information, you can contact the Council's Data Protection Officer.  Contact details can be found at www.glasgow.gov.uk/privacy.

However, you also have the right to lodge a complaint about data protection matters with the Information Commissioner's Office.  Visit their website for more information at https://ico.org.uk/concerns

If your complaint is not about a data protection matter you can find details on how to make a complaint on our website at www.glasgow.gov.uk/complaints

More information

For more details on how we process your personal information visit www.glasgow.gov.uk/privacy

If you do not have access to the internet you can contact us via telephone to request hard copies of our documents.