Privacy Notices - Housing surveys Privacy Notice

You need to be aware of this Privacy Notice if you are completing the annual Tenant Satisfaction Measure survey, sent out by SBC Housing as required by the Regulator of Social Housing as required Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard (previously called the Tenant Satisfaction Measure Standard).

You should also read this Privacy Notice if you are completing any other survey that SBC Housing is required to carry out on behalf of other Government regulated housing bodies, these may include the Housing Ombudsman Service, the Regulator of Social Housing and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

A Privacy Notice is a statement issued by an organisation which explains how personal and confidential data about individuals is collected, used, and shared.

Swindon Borough Council will act as a “Data Controller” for any personal data that you provide to us. We will ensure that the data given to us is processed in line with our Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

To find out more about Swindon Borough Council’s data protection policies, please contact our Data Protection Officer: dataprotection@swindon.gov.uk or in writing to Data Protection Officer, Civic Offices, Euclid Street, Swindon, Wiltshire SN1 2JH.

Please note that if you do not provide your personal details as requested, we may not be able to consider your feedback.

Personal data relates to a living individual who can be identified from that data. Identification can be by the information alone or in conjunction with any other information in the data controller’s possession or likely to come into such possession. The processing of data is governed by the Data Protection Act 2018/UK GDPR.

We will hold personal information comprising of your name, contact details and address. 

We will also collect special category data, age, disability, and race.

Swindon Borough Council complies with our obligations under the DPA 2018 / UK GDPR by keeping personal data up to date; by storing and destroying it securely; by not collecting or retaining excessive amounts of data; by protecting personal data from loss, misuse, unauthorised access, and disclosure and by ensuring that appropriate technical measures are in place to protect personal data.

We have an interest in processing personal data during the Housing Tenant Satisfaction Measure survey, keeping records of the diversity of survey respondents.

We need the following to:

• comply with Government requirements in ensuring the responses we receive are representative of the tenants we serve.
• help with statistical and analytical purposes
• monitor access to our survey.
• deliver services and support to you.
• manage those services we provide to you.
• train and manage the employment of our workers who deliver those services.
• check the quality of services.
• help with research and planning of new services

We may process categories of data such as address to review survey statistics, the results of which will influence future Housing service delivery with a view to improving overall tenant satisfaction.

We must always ensure that processing your data is generally lawful, fair, and transparent and complies with all the other principles and requirements of the Data Protection ACT 2018/UK GDPR.

• Article 6 – lawful basis for processing personal data, the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023.
  • Public task: the processing is necessary for the local authority to perform a task in the public interest or for official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law in terms of Health and Social Care Provision.
• Legal Obligation – we must carry out a Tenant Satisfaction Survey as a statutory Housing duty.
  • Public Task: we have a clear legal basis to process your personal data for the purpose of the Tenant Satisfaction Survey.

Your personal information will be seen by Swindon Borough Council staff and may be disclosed to third parties for the following reasons:

• Acuity: for the delivery of our annual Tenant Satisfaction Measure survey.
• Housemark: to provide insight into social housing landlord performance, to see how we compare to similar landlords and to support improvement of service delivery.
• Housing Ombudsman and Local Government Ombudsman: for the administration of complaints.
• DocMail and Apogee: to facilitate the distribution of letters and important communications to customers. These services allow us to securely upload documents to their portals, from where they are printed and mailed to recipients. This may include, but is not limited to, housing-related correspondence such as a survey on the delivery of the Housing Service.
• The Police service: for the detection and prevention of crime.
• Repair Contractors: if, because of the information you supply, we need to carry out repair works to your home.
• Cleaning companies: if, because of the information you supply, we need to carry out a clean of your home due to an issue such as damp and mould.

We will do what we can to make sure we hold records about you (electronically) in a secure way, and we will only make them available to those who have a right to see them.

We will maintain the reliability, accuracy, completeness, and currency of personal data in our databases and to protect the privacy and security of our databases. We keep your personal data only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes for which it was collected.

Our servers and databases are protected by industry standard security technology.

The employees who have access to personal data have been trained to handle such data properly and in accordance with latest regulation.

We will hold this information for a retention period of 36 months, from completion of the survey.

Under data protection law, you have rights including:

• Your right of access - you have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information
• Your right to rectification - you have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete
• Your right to erasure - you have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances
• Your right to restriction of processing - you have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances
• Your right to object to processing - you have the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances
• Your right to data portability - you have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances

In the event that you wish to complain about the way that your personal data has been handled by Swindon Borough Council, you should write to our Data Protection Officer and clearly outline your case. Your complaint will then be investigated in accordance with our customer complaint and data protection incident procedures.

Data Protection Office

You can contact our Data Protection officer by email: DataProtection@swindon.gov.uk

If you remain dissatisfied with the way your personal data has been handled, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at www.ICO.org.uk.

You may refer the matter to the Information Commissioner’s Office whose contact details are below:
Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Email: casework@ico.org.uk

The ICO website also contains information on data protection and your rights and remedies.

You are under no statutory obligation to provide personal data to Swindon Borough Council. If you do not provide your contact details we cannot enter you into the prize draw.

Your personal data is held on our housing management IT system. We regularly check this data. We will run a new report every time we need your data to communicate with you about a survey.

You are viewing the Privacy Notice for Housing surveys.

Read the main Privacy Notice