Privacy statement

The term ‘Personal Data’ means any information from which someone can be identified either directly or indirectly. For example, you can be identified by your name or an online identifier.

‘Special Category Personal Data’ is more sensitive Personal Data and includes information revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetic data, biometric data for the purposes of uniquely identifying someone, data concerning physical or mental health or data concerning someone’s sex life or sexual orientation. 

We aim to offer a great service. To allow us to do this effectively, we sometimes need to know details about you and your personal situation including information about you which is very private or sensitive. For example, details about your financial situation, ethnicity, religion or health and medical issues.

We collect most of the Personal Data directly from you in person, by telephone, text, live chat, email and/or via our website.

However, we may also collect your Personal Data from third parties such as others to whom you have already provided consent.

When contacting you in relation to any of the purposes set out in this privacy notice, we may do so via Post, Email, SMS Text message and/or WhatsApp. This list is not exhaustive and may change as technology changes.

We will endeavour to use your “Preferred Contact Method” in the first instance.

We process your Personal Data in accordance with current Data Protection Legislation.

This means we will:

• collect Personal Data about you fairly, lawfully and in a transparent manner.
• we will tell you what we will be doing with your Personal Data and what are lawful reason is for this.
• only collect Personal Data about you that we need.
• use your Personal Data for our business only and to comply with the law.
• make sure the Personal Data we hold for you is accurate and up to date.
• we will not keep your Personal Data for longer than we need to.
• store your Personal Data securely.
• share your Personal Data only when it is lawful to do so, and only with organisations who will keep it secure.
• we will not send your Personal Data out of the UK without ensuring its security.

Under the Data Protection Act 2018, we must tell you who’s responsible for deciding how your personal information is used. Peaks & Plains Housing Trust is the data controller.

We use your information in a few different ways but to summarise these are:

• to help us maintain and provide you with our services
• to deal with administration
• to contact you with details of changes to services you are receiving
• for business analysis, and research and testing to ensure the integrity of our systems
• for marketing, about products and services we think might be suitable for you unless you tell us not to send you information
• to comply with the law, this may include sharing your information with our regulator
• to identify you if you need to contact us

The information you provided will be used by us to send you communications in the form of; post, email, SMS text and/or WhatsApp.  The information sent can be in relation to your tenancy, or other general communications from the Trust.

The type of Personal Data we collect about you, how we use it, our lawful basis and how long we keep it will depend on our relationship with you. Please see the table below for further details: 

We record some telephone calls so we can check we’ve acted on your instructions correctly and to make sure that we provide the very best service. We may also monitor calls for security and training purposes. All recordings are kept for 12 months then securely deleted.

We operate a CCTV system at our head office located at The Ropewalks, Macclesfield, and in several communal properties that we own and operate. It is for the purposes of security, crime prevention, and ensuring the safety of our employees, visitors, and property. The system records video footage but does not capture audio. All recorded footage is stored securely and accessed only by authorised personnel when necessary.

The CCTV footage may be shared with the police or other relevant authorities if required, for the detection or prevention of crime. Footage is retained for a limited period in accordance with our data retention policy, after which it is securely deleted unless required for ongoing investigations.

We may share your Personal Data with third parties in connection with the purposes set out in this Privacy Notice. These third parties, where necessary, may include:

• our contractors, business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors who may process information on our behalf
• advertisers & social media platforms
• legal service providers
• IT service providers
• local authorities and other public bodies, including the police
• our outsourced Data Protection Officer

The reasons we may have to share your Personal Data are to make sure we can;

• set up and administer your account correctly
• give you a high standard of service
• help prevent fraud and money laundering
• obtain professional/legal advice
• understand your needs and preferences
• offer you relevant products and services unless you tell us not to

With your consent, these subsidiaries may contact you (by Post, Email, SMS Message and/or WhatsApp) to tell you about carefully selected products, services or offers that we believe might interest you. The products and services may not be related to your housing needs.

You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us as shown in the “Contact Us” section, or by clicking Unsubscribe in any emails you may receive from them. This won’t end your communications or relationship with Peaks & Plains Housing Trust.

If we were unfortunate to lose you as a customer and you apply for another property with a different landlord, we may have to pass information on to help your move happen as smoothly as possible. The information we share in this case is your payment history, any anti-social behaviour and how long you have been in your property.

You have certain rights under the processing of your Personal Data, including:

Right to be informed of how we use your Personal Data. We do this using this Privacy Notice.

· Right to access your Personal Data (commonly known as a “Subject Access Request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the Personal Data we hold about you.

·   Right to rectification of the Personal Data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate Personal Data we hold about you corrected.

·       Right to erasure of your Personal Data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove Personal Data. 

· Right to object to processing of your Personal Data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground.

·         Right to restrict of processing of your Personal Data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your Personal Data, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.

·  Right to portability (transfer) of your Personal Data to another party.

·         Automated decision-making. You have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing which will significantly affect you.

Right to withdraw consent

In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the processing of your Personal Data for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your Personal Data for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis or legal requirement for doing so.

If you wish to exercise your rights, please email trust@peaksplains.org

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity before we can process a request from you to exercise any of the above rights. This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

We use cookies to:

• remember you when you visit this website to keep track of your browsing patterns and to build up a profile of how you and other users use the website
• make our website work as efficiently as possible
• administer services to you and to advertisers such as online forms and Google translate

Most browsers allow you to turn off cookies. To do this look at the "help" menu on your browser. Switching off cookies may restrict your use of the website and/or delay or affect the way in which it operates.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is an industry body that provides in depth information about cookies. For further information visit https://www.aboutcookies.org website.

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (a text file) that a website (when visited by a user) asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Functional Cookies

These cookies enable the website to provide enhanced functionality and personalisation. They may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we have added to our pages. If you do not allow these cookies then some or all of these services may not function properly.

Performance Cookies

These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance.

Targeting Cookies

These cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable information.

The office of the Information Commissioner is the government appointed office with responsibility for data protection. They can assist with any complaints or questions you may have in regard to our processing of your Personal Data.

The ICO can be contacted online at: Contact us | ICO or by telephone on 0303 123 1113.

By post:
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

To help us prevent fraud or money laundering, your details may be passed to other companies, local authorities or other public bodies including the police. You can ask for more details about the information sharing agreements that Peaks & Plains Housing Trust has in place by emailing privacy@peaksplains.org.

Former employee data is kept for a period of six years from the date of leaving and is therefore cleansed following this period. Data submitted in relation to an online application for an advertised role will be held on the system for three months. After this time it will be cleansed. We process this information in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations 2018.

If you want more information about how we keep your information safe, how we use it or if you need to complain please get in touch.

privacy@peaksplains.org

The Data Protection Officer
Peaks & Plains Housing Trust
Ropewalks
Newton Street
Macclesfield
SK11 6QJ