This privacy notice explains what information the council needs in order to deliver the private sector housing service.

It is necessary for the council to collect, store and process personal data relating to complainants, business owners, landlords, and anyone else connected with a report. Safeguards are in place to ensure that this data is kept secure and the privacy of individuals is protected.

It should be read alongside the council’s main privacy notice.

Who is responsible for your information?

Chesterfield Borough Council is the data controller for the personal information collected, unless stated otherwise.

How is your information collected?

As part of the regulation and licensing processes, the council may collect information about you in a number of ways, these could include: 

• information you provide to us
• information created about you by an enforcement officer (for example the officer’s pace notebook entry on your behaviour and interaction with them)
• information shared with us by another council team (for example the housing team)
• information shared with us by another regulatory or enforcement agency (for example the police or the fire service), by another local authority, by a health or social care professional or organisation, or by another licensing authority
• information we receive from the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS)
• information provided to us by a member of the public
• information shared with us by a government department or executive agency
• the results of a data matching exercise like the National Fraud Initiative
• information collected from surveillance cameras

Purposes of processing your personal data

We need to process your personal information in order to enforce private sector housing regulations. The private sector housing team deal with a lot of different issues, including:

• investigation of complaints about private sector housing issues
• enforcement of private sector housing regulations
• inspections of privately rented properties and landlord accreditation (EMLAS scheme)
• licensing of HMOs, mobile home parks
• maintaining records of empty homes
• maintaining records of unauthorised encampments
• providing public sector housing advice
• administering grants and funding – Disabled Facilities Grant, Home Repairs Allowance
• immigration inspections – usually at your request to support a visa application

We need to capture and process information about the individuals who report concerns to us, along with details of the subject of the concern and/or offenders.  When investigating an issue, we may also need to capture information about landowners, business owners, building owners, landlords and any witnesses or other individuals involved or related to the investigation.

Categories of data and lawful basis

Personal data

In order to provide this service, we may need to process some or all of the following categories of personal information:

• contact details
• age
• financial information
• information about the other people you live with and your relationship to them (tenants)
• information about properties you own (landlords)
• the details of your complaint
• criminal convictions
• health information

Under data protection legislation, processing of this data is allowed because we have a statutory duty to provide the private sector housing service. 

Some processing is done because we have your consent, for example contact lists of landlords to provide information about legislative or policy changes. Where this is the case, you can withdraw your consent and any time by using the contact details below. 

Where we process sensitive personal data (eg. health data), our lawful basis is that it is for reasons of substantial public interest, or because we have the explicit consent of the individual.

Legislation

The council’s statutory duty to carry out this processing is created from the following pieces of legislation (this list is not exhaustive):

• Housing Act 2004
• Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996
• Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 and 1987

Who we share your personal data with

As part of an investigation or enforcement action, we may have to share information with:

• other teams at Chesterfield Borough Council (eg. legal services, housing team, community safety team)
• Police
• other local authorities eg.Derbyshire County Council
• health and social care services
• education authority
• youth offending team
• councillors (at Chesterfield Borough Council)
• landlords (private and social)
• government departments eg. the Home Office

This data sharing is done as part of the delivery of this service.

For the landlord accreditation scheme, we will share the results of inspections with EMLAS. 

Some enforcement actions are shared with the public as a press release. 

With your consent, we may refer your case to an organisation that provides specialist advice or support eg. the Derbyshire Law Centre. 

If you apply for a home improvement loan, we will share some information about you with our contractors to carry out the work, and with Foundations (a charity that support access to home improvement loans and support gas safety). 

Some personal data will be shared with Derby City Council as part of the Derbyshire-wide housing stock condition survey. The goal is to produce a clear picture of the state of housing stock across the county. The data that is shared will only be used to understand the current status and use of each property.

Further information

Please get in touch if you would like more information about how the council processes your personal data:

• contact the council's data protection officer