Council tax, revenues and benefits
This privacy notice relates to Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council revenues and benefits services, including Council Tax. It applies to information provided by post, email, telephone and online.
The data controller
The data controller for the Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council website and CRM system is:
- Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council, Town Hall, Coton Road, Nuneaton CV11 5AA
We will store the data in our computer and manual record systems and restrict access according to relevant policies and procedures.
Personal data
The personal data we hold includes: name, address, National Insurance Number, date of birth, contact details, income details, bank details, employer details, details of people living with you, landlord details, contact details of your doctor, and student details.
We may also collect names and contact details of anyone you have appointed to act on your behalf.
We may collect this information from you, or from other organisations such as landlords, letting agents, other councils, Department for Work & Pensions, HM Revenues & Customs, Land Registry, Job Centre Plus, Pension Service, Credit Reference Agencies, Valuation Office Agency, and other council departments.
We will use this data for the following purposes:
- maintain the property database for both Council Tax and Business Rates
- calculate liability and changes for Council Tax and Business Rates
- to collect monies for Council Tax, Business Rates, Housing Benefit Overpayments, Sundry Debts and Housing Rents, as applicable
- assessment of Housing Benefit/Council Tax Support, should you apply
- assessment of Discretionary Housing Payments and Hardship Payments, should you apply
- provide personal budgeting support and assisted digital support, if appropriate
- help us to test our systems and train our staff
- help us to develop our process and systems and improve our services
Legal basis
The processing of your information is necessary for compliance with the legal obligations under various laws including but not limited to:
- The Local Government Finance Act 1992
- Local Government Finance Act 1988
- Social Security Administration Act 1992
- Housing Benefit Regulations 2006 (as amended) both working age and pensioners
- Social Security Administration Act 1992
- Council Tax Reduction Schemes (Prescribed Requirements) (England) Regulations 2012
Data protection law describes this legal basis for processing your data as necessary for compliance with a legal obligation.
Where it is necessary to process your personal information for the purposes of prevention or detection of fraud or other crime, data protection law describes this legal basis as necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest.
Consent
We do not need your consent to collect or process your personal information. This is because we need to process your personal information to comply with a legal obligation.
Disclosure
Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council may pass on your personal data to third parties for the purposes of detecting or preventing fraud or other crime, or if it is necessary in connection with our revenues and benefits services.
These organisations may include other departments at Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council, other local authorities including Coventry City Council, Warwickshire County Council and North Warwickshire Borough Council, Warwickshire Police, government departments including the Department of Work and Pensions and HMRC, contractors or organisations providing support services such as software or credit reference agencies, or any other organisation where we are required or permitted by law to share information.
In some circumstances we may pass your personal data to enforcement agents and/or judicial agencies if it is necessary in order to recover outstanding debts.
Your records are held within a secure case management system and in a secure section of the council’s information management system, both of which are hosted on the council’s networks. If we keep manual records these are located within a secure file storage system.
If you do not provide the information we need, in some circumstances you may be breaking the law. In other circumstances it may not be possible to provide you with the services or support that you have requested.
Retention period
Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council will process your personal data for as long as you have a live account with our revenues and benefits services.
We will keep your data for as long as we need it in order to comply with our legal or regulatory requirements or for other legitimate purposes. This will normally be a minimum of six years after your account is closed.
Your rights as a data subject
You have the right:
- to request a copy of the information that we hold about you;
- to correct data that we hold about you that is inaccurate or incomplete;
- in certain circumstances you can ask for the data we hold about you to be erased from our records;
- where certain conditions apply to have a right to restrict the processing;
- in some circumstances, to have the data we hold about you transferred to another organisation;
- to object to certain types of processing such as direct marketing;
- to complain if we refuse a request you may make using these rights and you are not happy with our reason.
We may refer any request you may make using these rights to another organisation, if they have been involved in processing your personal data.
Housing Benefit
Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council sometimes needs information about people other than the person who has applied for a benefit to work out what that person is entitled to.
Where a person makes a claim for Housing Benefit, we need information about other people who live in the same household to work out how much the person will be paid.