Privacy Notice: How we use your personal information

The privacy and security of your personal information is important to us.

Your contact with us generates records, including records of some personal information which is subject to data protection legislation.

This privacy notice explains how and why we use your personal data, to make sure you stay informed and can be confident about giving us your information. We’ll never sell your personal data and will only share it with organisations we work with when it’s appropriate and the privacy and security of your data is assured.

We’ll keep this privacy notice updated to show you all the things we do with your personal data and we’ll let you know about any key changes that affect you. In certain circumstances we may also provide an extra privacy notice, which will always refer back to this full notice.

Overview

This notice applies if you’re a tenant, enquire about, apply for or use any of our services, visit our website, email, call, social media messages or write to us, or visit us in person.

The type of information we collect depends on our needs. For example, if you contact or visit us, we may only need limited information about you to deal with your query. If you are one of our tenants, enquirers or applicants, we may need to collect a variety of information about you to ensure that we can provide you with appropriate housing, comply with the terms of your tenancy agreement with us, or to provide you with or refer you to appropriate support services to assist you. Information may include your contact details, financial information (including the receipt of benefits), or mental or physical health information (including whether you have any disabilities we should be aware of). We may also need to collect certain information to meet our statutory obligations.

We ensure that the information we hold about you is only used for the purposes it was obtained for, and only kept for as long as is necessary to provide you with services, deal with your tenancy (or enquiry or application), or to comply with our other statutory or regulatory obligations. We may need to share some information with third parties, such as local authorities, benefits departments, our repairs and maintenance contractors, social services, other social landlords and government departments as required, and the emergency services.

You also have various rights in relation to your personal data, including the right to see copies of the personal data we hold about you, or to make a complaint to the regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).

This is only a simple overview of how we use your personal data. The rest of this notice is split into sections to make it easier to understand.

If you have any queries about this notice, please contact us using the contacting us section below.

Who are “we”?

In this notice, whenever you see the words ‘we’, ‘us’, ‘our’, or ‘WWMHS, it refers to Winchester Working Men’s Housing Society Limited.

We are a Registered Provider of social housing, regulated by the Regulator of Social Housing.

As a Social Housing provider, our normal activities can be summarised as:

1. Providing social housing.
2. Property and grounds maintenance and repair.
3. Managing your housing, tenancy and account as your landlord.

We also provide additional optional services including:

4. Signposting to welfare, benefits and debt advice.
5. Adaptations made to the properties we own and manage.

Contacting us

If you have any questions in relation to this document or how we use your personal data they should be sent to: [email protected] or

The Chief Executive,
Winchester Working Men’s Housing Society, 6a Ronald Bowker Court, Greenhill Road, Winchester, SO22 5EA

Who the personal information relates to

We collect and hold personal information about:

Customers - This includes current, former and potential tenants who live in our properties or access our support and other services and includes members of their family and people associated with them.

Visitors - Visitors to our website and our offices, those who email, call, message us via a social media application or write to us, including anyone who makes a complaint or enquiry to WWMHS

How we collect personal information

We collect information in a variety of ways.

You can give us personal data by filling in forms provided by us, for example at tenancy sign-up, by responding to our surveys or requests for information, or by corresponding with us (by phone, email or other methods).

We also collect information through our ongoing contact and correspondence with you, and with other support agencies which relate to you, and from people associated with you such as family, friends and neighbours.

We have telephone answering facilities at which you may leave messages when you telephone us at our registered office landline or our WWMHS staff mobile phones.

If you provide us with personal information relating to members of your family or your associates we will assume that you do so with their knowledge and consent.

It is important that you notify us of any changes to your personal information as soon as possible so that we can contact you easily.

What information we hold (tenants)

When you enquire or apply to WWMHS for housing, we obtain information to determine your housing needs.

You will provide us with information through your application form and related correspondence. We will also use information from third parties such as  other housing providers/private landlords, your mortgage lender (if you own/have owned your own home), the Police, the Probation Service, support workers, social workers, mental health workers and credit reference agencies where appropriate to help us to assess your application.

We may require the following information from tenants

• Full name
• Date of birth;
• Contact details, including telephone, email or contact address;
• Details of anyone authorised to act on your behalf if applicable;
• Name and date of birth of all household residents;
• Benefit and Council tax information;

We may ask to see but do not usually retain copies of:

• Photo ID
• National Insurance Number
• Children’s birth certificates
• Proof of child benefit

Other personal information may be collected in order to help us assess housing need, or resolve breaches of tenancy, alleged anti-social behaviour or suspected fraud.

What information we hold (visitors)

We will keep a record of your contact with us, whether by phone, email, in writing or in person. We also note any action taken as a result of your contact with us.

For visitors to the website, in order for our website to work correctly, we automatically collect the following information:

Technical information, including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet, your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and if you access our website via your mobile device we will collect your unique phone identifier.

Information about your visit, including, but not limited to the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) and query string, clickstream to, through and from our website (including date and time), products you viewed or searched for, page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as but not limited to scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), methods used to browse away from the page, and any phone number used to call our customer service number and the terms that you use to search our website.

How we use your information

Your personal data will be collected and used to help us deliver activities or services or to complete a task raised at your request.

What we do with your information will depend on the nature of our relationship with you and how you interact with our various services and website.

We use your personal information to allow us to:

Enter into and manage any contract we have with you, for instance including:

• Processing applications and requests for rental accommodation (housing) and car parking space rental
• Managing tenancies including collecting rent and service charges
• Ensuring compliance with the conditions of any agreement between us
• Providing repairs, maintenance and adaptions at our properties

Provide you with services and benefits in both our legitimate interests, including ensuring the proper management of your tenancy and giving you appropriate support:

• Offering help with debts and benefits advice and signposting
• Assisting you in the management of account charges, payments and arrears
• Engaging with you to make improvements to our products and services

Comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, and acting in the public interest, such as:

• Preventing and detect crime and resolve disputes
• Preventing and detect fraud and money laundering
• Promoting safety and the quiet enjoyment of our neighbourhood and community
• Promoting equal opportunities and fair treatment for all
• Meeting the obligations we owe to our regulators and stakeholders

We are required to provide anonymised information about new tenancies, to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).  If we provide anonymised data about your tenancy to MHCLG in this way, we will give you a copy of the MHCLG Privacy Notice for Continuous Recording of Social Housing Lettings (“CORE”) , which is used for statistical and research purposes including informing the development of housing policy in the UK.

Children’s personal data

We do not usually process data on children aged under 18 that live in our properties, as all of our tenants are adults. However, we may record children’s basic information if they are resident in one of our properties, including their name and date of birth. This is required for checking the property is not overcrowded and to assess other tenancy management issues where all householders and ages are required to be known.

We may also receive children’s information if we are involved in the housing and tenancy aspects of a welfare case as part of a multi-agency working solution.

Sharing your information

Your personal information will be kept secure and confidential. Our staff and volunteers have restricted access to personal information on a “need to know” basis.

We may share information with third parties, including contractors we work with such as our repairs and maintenance contractors, third party cloud hosting and IT infrastructure providers, agencies and authorities we work with, such as Local Authorities, Social Services, Police, and other social landlords.

We will share certain information in appropriate circumstances with our regulators, stakeholders, or purchasers or potential purchasers of our business. We will also share relevant information with others when WWMHS believes it is in your, or the public’s, interest to do so, such as to keep customers, staff or visitors safe, or as required by law.

In particular, please be aware:

• Current or forwarding addresses may be shared with utility companies and Council Tax offices to ensure billing details are correct.
• If you default on any tenancy/licence conditions, information about you may be provided to authorised debt recovery agencies, to enable them to recover the debt. This may affect future applications for tenancies, credit and insurance.

• We may discuss your financial situation, rent payments (including any arrears) and any claims made for welfare benefits with an external debt advice agency, welfare rights advisor, the housing benefit department or the local authorities’ housing advice and homeless prevention team to make sure that benefits are paid correctly.

• We may pass data about your rent payment record to credit reference agencies. This will enable them to assist other organisations to assess your financial standing if you apply for products and services.

• We may pass your contact information to a third party to conduct surveys and research on our behalf which allow us to gather feedback and improve the services we offer you. The third party will be bound to strict terms and conditions outlined by us and will not share your data with other organisations. Should you choose not to participate in the surveys the third party will securely destroy your data.

• We may share your National Insurance number to verify your Universal Credit application and manage these payments and to prevent and investigate tenancy fraud.

When we allow third parties acting on behalf of WWMHS to access to your information, we will always have complete control of what they see, how long they see it for and what they are allowed to do with it. We do not sell or share your personal information for other organisations to use.

Your rights

You have various rights in your personal data including the right in certain circumstances:

• to ask us for access to information about you that we hold;
• to have your personal data rectified, if it is inaccurate or incomplete;
• to request the deletion or removal of personal data unless there is a compelling reason for its continued processing, for example if we are required to retain it for statutory purposes, or to protect our legal interests;
• to restrict our use of your personal data (i.e. permitting its storage but nothing further), although in some cases we will not be able to restrict our uses of your information, for example if we are required to process it for statutory purposes or to protect our interests;
• to object to certain ways we use your information;
• not to be subject to decisions made automatically through the use of technology and with no human consideration where it produces a legal or similarly significant effect on you; and
• to request that we transfer your information directly to a new landlord or other third party.

Further information about your data protection rights appear on the Information Commissioner’s website at: https://ico.org.uk/global/privacy-notice/your-data-protection-rights/

COMPLAINTS OR CONCERNS

If you are unhappy with our use of your personal data, or anything in this notice, please talk to us directly so we can help to resolve any problem or query.

Website terms and conditions

WWMHS makes every effort to ensure that the material contained in this website is accurate and up-to-date. However, we cannot warrant the accuracy and completeness of such material.

We make every effort to ensure that links from this website to third party websites are relevant, current and appropriate. However, we do not accept liability in connection with any third party websites which may be linked or accessible through our websites and we do not endorse or approve the contents of any such site.

Any data submitted via our online forms is not secure and we cannot guarantee that information submitted will not be intercepted or modified, or that it will be received safely.

We make every effort to ensure that our systems and website are free from viruses and harmful files. However, the material accessed through the use of our web pages is obtained entirely at your own risk and you will be responsible for any resulting problems or damage to software or computer systems and/or any resulting loss of data.

In no event will WWMHS be liable for any direct, indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages arising out of the use of the information held on the site.

Nothing on this website shall be construed as an offer or the basis for a contract between us and you or any other party.

Information on this website is provided for information purposes only, you should not rely on it to make any decision without either taking professional advice or verifying the accuracy of the information provided.

Our website and these terms and conditions shall be governed by English law and subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English Courts.

Winchester Working Men’s Housing Society Limited is a charitable Registered Society under the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014, registered with the Financial Conduct Authority no. 5338R and with the Regulator of Social Housing no. L2732. Registered office: 6a Ronald Bowker Court, Greenhill Road, Winchester, SO22 5EA.

Cookies

A cookie is a small file which is placed on your computer’s hard drive. They help in providing you with a better service from our website as we are able to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie will never give us access to your computer or any of your personal information, other than the data you choose to share with us.

WWMHS uses Google analytics to identify which web pages are being used. More on how Google Analytics uses cookies can be found here.

We only use the information that we collect for statistical analysis purposes. From the data that we collect we can analyse how our website is working from the traffic we receive and will help us to improve our website service.

We assume that you are happy to receive all cookies your browser settings allow. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer.

Other third party cookies

Our website does not have any advertising from any other organisations. However, we may include links to other websites we feel may be of use to you, which may use their own cookies. We do not control these third party cookies, so please visit their websites to check their privacy or cookie policies.

User agreement

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