Appeal of Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction Scheme Privacy Statement

This page was last updated on 19 May 2022

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. Contact details for our Data Protection Officer can be found on our website at www.glasgow.gov.uk/privacy.

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

You are giving us your personal information to allow us to reconsider your claim to Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction and award it if appeal successful. We also use your information to verify your identity where required, contact you by post, email or telephone and to maintain our records.

Legal basis for using your information:

These services are provided in terms of the council's statutory functions as a local authority, more details of which can be found 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 details will be checked internally for fraud prevention and verification purposes and may be shared with other public bodies for the same purpose. We are 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 proportionate. We may also share your information with DWP, The Pension Service, Rent Service Scotland, Glasgow City Assessor and Electoral Registration Officer, Mag: Net Solutions, TransUnion, Scott & Co and Walker Love in relation to your appeal for Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction. Information is also analysed internally in order to provide management information, inform service delivery reform and similar purposes. This is in accordance with the council's Information Use and Privacy Policy, the privacy statement set out in full on our website, and the provisions of our Records Management Plan approved in terms of the Public Records (Scotland) Act 2011.

How long do we keep your information for?

The council maintains a records retention and disposal schedule which sets out how long we hold different types of information for. This is available on the council's website at www.glasgow.gov.uk/rrds or you can request a hard copy from the contact address below.

Your rights under data protection law:

Access to your information - You have the right to request a copy of the personal information about you that we hold.
Correcting your information- We want to make sure that your personal information is accurate, complete and up to date and 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 consider that we no longer require the information for the purposes for which it was obtained

II. You have validly objected 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 require 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 about you that we hold or assessing the validity of any objection you have made to our use of your information. The 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 validly exercised, 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 in any of the ways set out 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 to assess your own entitlement to this service. If they want any more information on how we will use their information they can visit our web site at www.glasgow.gov.uk/privacy.

Complaints:

If you do not have access to the internet you can contact us on 0141 287 1055 to request hard copies of any of the above documents.

We aim to directly resolve all complaints about how we handle personal information. However, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office. Contact details for our Data Protection Officer and for the ICO can be found on our website under www.glasgow.gov.uk/privacy.