In order to provide services to you, it is necessary for us to collect and hold personal information about you. This information will be used to:

• process your request or enquiry;
• contact you in case of a query or an issue concerning the service you have requested;

• help investigate complaints or concerns you have raised about the service provided;
• help detect and prevent fraud and corruption in the use of public funds and where necessary for law enforcement functions;
• maintain our own accounts and records;
• help us build up a picture of how we are performing;
• provide statistical analysis.

If you fail to provide certain information, we may not be able to provide the service you have requested. We will also use this information to assist us in the delivery of an improved standard of customer service.

When you contact us requesting certain services, your personal information may be recorded in our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to ensure those services can be delivered. This is a central system which holds details about our residents and service users and will be used by services across the council to deliver and improve the services. It is our intention that over time the CRM will build up a single record database of each individual, ensuring you will only have to tell us your information once, thereby improving the efficiency in which we will deal with your request.

Call recording allows us to demonstrate the quality of service provided to you, and provides evidence in times of dispute over the quality of service received. Personal data revealed during a telephone call will be recorded to deliver appropriate services.

Occasionally special category personal data may be recorded where you voluntarily disclose health, religious, ethnicity or criminal information to support your request for advice and/or services.

Lawful basis for processing data

The lawful basis for processing your personal data is on the basis of public task, contractual and legal obligation. Also, when using call recording and maintaining the CRM system to meet our legitimate needs.

We are allowed to process personal and sensitive data for the reasons of substantial public interest where it is necessary for us to fulfil our legal obligations and regulatory requirements. For processing special category data in relation to health, this is necessary to perform our obligations under social protection law for the purpose of assessing eligibility for a council tax discount or exemption and/or determining the nature and degree of the disability which may increase the Housing Benefit award.