Privacy Policy

The Privacy Notice below explains how we use information about you and how we protect your privacy.

We have delivered training to each of our staff members and take the General Data Protection Regulation (GDRP hereafter) seriously to ensure all data retained is required, secure and we hold permission to retain this. If you have any concerns in relation to our policy and procedure, please contact dataprotection@probrookproperties.co.uk

• Why we collect your personal information
• Why do we need your personal information?
• Consent and Your Preferences
• We only use what we need
• Visiting our websites
• Who do we share your information with?
• Keeping your information secure
• How long do we keep your personal information?
• Your Rights
• How to tell us of a data breach
• Where can I get advice?

Why we collect your personal information

Do you know what personal data is?

Personal data can be anything that identifies and relates to a living person. This can include information that when put together with other information can be used to identify a person.

Information we may collect about you may include (but is not limited to):

• Name
• Address
• Telephone numbers
• Email addresses
• Date of birth
• National insurance number
• Bank details
• Identification documents
• Income and expenditure
• Next of kin details
• Health data
• Criminal data

We may also collect personal information from others with whom you reside with or receive service from us – this may include:

• Family and household members
• Referees
• Guarantors
• Representatives
• Enquirers

Did you know that some of your personal information might be classified as ‘special’?

Some information is ‘special’ and needs more protection due to its sensitivity. It’s often information you would not want widely known and is very personal to you. This is likely to include anything that can reveal information relating to your:

• Sexuality and sexual health
• Religious or philosophical beliefs
• Ethnicity
• Physical or mental health
• Trade union membership
• Political opinion
• Genetic/biometric data
• Criminal history

We will only collect this type of information if it is necessary to your contract so that we can provide the right services to you.

We may at times need to share this information but we will only do this if we have your consent or if there are legal requirements for us to do so. We may receive information about you from other data controllers, such as to the police, who might tell us about a crime they are investigating where this impacts on your contract with us or those who live in the same community. If you give us this information about yourself when communicating with us, you do so because you consider it forms part of a legitimate interest for us to hold this information on our records.

If we ask for any sensitive personal data about you, we will always explain to you why we require it and ask for your consent to hold it.

Why do we need your personal information?

We may need to use some information about you to:

• deliver services and support to you;
• manage those services we provide to you;
• service improvement;
• prevention/detection of crime/fraud;
• help investigate any complaints you have about your services;
• check the quality of services;
• to help with research and planning of new services.

How the law allows us to use your personal information

There are several legal reasons why we need to collect and use your personal information.

Generally, we collect and use personal information for the purposes of where:

• you are entering or have entered into a contract with us;
• you, or your legal representative, have given consent;
• it is necessary to protect someone in an emergency;
• it is required by law;
• you have made your information publicly available;
• it is necessary for legal cases;

Consent and Your Preferences

We may contact you or send communications to tell you about a service enhancement such as improvements or required maintenance. We won’t need your consent to communicate with you this way because we have assessed that it forms part of our agreement with you and it is of mutual interest for us to keep you informed and therefore relevant to keep you informed. This may be in the form of letter, telephone SMS text message or email.

We only use what we need

Where we can, we’ll only collect and use personal information if we need it to deliver a service or meet a requirement.

If we don’t need personal information we will not request this from you. Information requested will only be what is required to service our properties. An example is when applying for a property, we will require personal data to carry out referencing to determine eligibility for our property.

We won’t sell your personal information to anyone else.

We may share your personal data with our contractors or your landlord but this will only be on a required, lawful basis such as maintenance or to facilitate utility payments.

Visiting our website

When visiting our website, you may choose to enquire about one of our properties. In order for us to respond to you appropriately, you will be asked to provide your name, email address and telephone number. We will dispose of this electronic data within two weeks of your enquiry unless you then convert to one of our continued customers in the form of a tenant, landlord, buyer etc.

Our website is fully serviced by an independent provider, Lyles Sutherland, who provide a secure server to ensure your data is kept confidential.

How we use your telephone number and email address

Text messages and contact via telephone or email provide a direct way to contact and share information with you about the services we provide you with and services we can offer you. It can also help you receive important messages about your tenancy.

If you provide your telephone number or email address we may keep in contact with you by these methods.

Operational SMS/text/email messaging and calls

If you supply us with your telephone or email contact details, we may use them to call or send you operational text messages.

Examples of operational text messages might be (but not limited to):

• Confirming a repair and/or a time and date for a repairs contractor to visit
• Confirming a home visit
• Rent Account updates, arrears actions
• Sending a reminder about an appointment
• Asking you to contact a named person or department

Sharing your telephone number with third parties

We may pass your telephone number to third parties so that we can meet our contractual obligations with you. We may also share your telephone numbers if we are required to by law.

We may supply the details to our approved third-party contractors who are delivering or performing services on our behalf, and these companies must not use your information for any other purpose. We never share or sell your telephone numbers to telesales/marketing companies.

Who do we share your information with?

We utilise a range of organisations to either store personal information or help deliver our services to you. Where we have these arrangements there is always an agreement in in place to make sure that the organisation complies with GDPR.

We may enter into partnerships with other organisations such as local authorities and the police. For example, we may join a partnership to help prevent and control anti-social behaviour. In order to protect your information, we will enter into a legally binding data sharing agreement with partner organisations before any sharing takes place. It is not always possible for us to tell you that personal information is being shared, for example when we are working with the police or other agencies to help the investigation or detection of a crime as to do so may prejudice that investigation.

We are likely to share your personal information with the following:

Property Services and Repairs

Contractors for the purposes of carrying out property related surveys and repairs. Generally, we will only share your name, the property address and your contact details so that they can arrange an appointment with you. In some cases, we may also share customer service information with them, for example where we are aware there is a pet in the property. We may also need to share information where we have recorded there is a potential risk to operatives or other representatives.

Local Authorities

We will share your personal information with local authorities usually for the purposes of providing services processed by that local authority such as Universal Credit purposes. We will also share your information with the Local Authority to facilitate the transfer of Council Tax payment into the responsible parties’ names. We may also share information with local authorities for the purpose of investigating tenancy fraud or other types of fraud or criminal investigations. You will not have a right be told about this type of sharing because to do so may affect those investigations. However, we will take steps to protect your information and only share what is necessary for those investigations.

Police

We may share your personal information with the police for the purposes of preventing or detecting a crime or fraud.

Safeguarding and Support Agencies

We may need to share your personal information with support agencies if we suspect that there may be safeguarding concerns about yourself or those who are your dependent(s). We will not tell you about this beforehand, however, we will take steps to only share that personal information which is necessary for the safeguarding purposes.

Utility companies and local authorities

We may need to share your personal information with utility companies (primarily gas and electricity) and local authorities for the purpose of ensuring utility services and council tax to the property are correctly charged.

Debt Recovery Agents

We may share your personal information with debt recovery agents for the purposes of recovering any outstanding charges owed to us.

Legal Services and Partners

We may share your personal information with our legal services or solicitors if we are preparing or defending a legal claim.

Where there is a high risk to your personal information, we will complete a privacy assessment before we share personal information to make sure we protect privacy and comply with the law.

Sometimes we have a legal duty to provide personal information to other organisations, this is often because we need to give that data to the police, courts, local authorities or government bodies.

We may also share your personal information when we feel there’s a good reason that’s more important than protecting your privacy. This doesn’t happen often, but we may share your information:

• in order to detect and prevent a crime and fraud; or
• if there are serious risks to the public, our staff or to other professionals;
• safeguarding of vulnerable individuals;
• to protect adults who are thought to be at risk, for example if they are frail, confused or cannot understand what is happening to them.

If we’re worried about your physical safety or feel we need to act to protect you from being harmed in other ways, we’ll discuss this with you and, if possible, get your permission to tell others about your situation before doing so.

For these reasons the risk must be serious before we can override your right to privacy.

We may still share your information if we believe the risk to others is serious enough to do so.

There may also be rare occasions when the risk to others is so great that we need to share information straight away.

If this is the case, we’ll make sure that we record what information we share and our reasons for doing so. We’ll let you know what we’ve done and why if we think it is safe to do so and will not cause harm, distress or further risks to you, our staff, other professionals and/or the public.

Keeping your information secure

We store personal information both electronically and in paper form. We implement security policies, processes and technical security solutions to protect the personal information we hold from:

• Unauthorised access
• Improper use or disclosure
• Unauthorised modification
• Unlawful destruction or accidental loss

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

Examples of our security include:

• Encryption, meaning that information is hidden so that it cannot be read without special knowledge (such as a password). This is done with a secret code or what’s called a ‘cypher’. The hidden information is said to then be ‘encrypted’;
• Pseudonymisation, meaning that we’ll use a different name so we can hide parts of your personal information from view. This means that someone outside of ProBrook Properties could work on your information for us without ever knowing it was yours;
• Controlling access to systems and networks allows us to stop people who are not allowed to view your personal information from getting access to it;
• Training for our staff allows us to make them aware of how to handle information and how and when to report when something goes wrong;
• Regular testing of our technology and ways of working including keeping up to date on the latest security updates.

When you contact us, we may ask you to provide us with some information so that we can confirm your identity. If other people (e.g. family members, support workers, solicitors) act on your behalf we will take steps to ensure that you have agreed for them to do so. This may include asking them to provide us with supporting information to indicate your consent. We do this to protect you and to make sure that other people cannot obtain information relating to you, your property or your tenancy which they are not entitled to know.

Employees and third parties who have access to, or are associated with the processing of, your personal information are obliged to make reasonable efforts to safeguard it.

Where in the world is your information?

All of your personal information is stored on our systems within the UK. We do not share any of your data outwith the UK.

How long do we keep your personal information?

There’s often a legal or a contractual reason for keeping your personal information for a set period of time. We will keep your information for the duration of providing a service or product to you under the terms of a contract, such as your tenancy agreement. Following termination of your contract, we will retain your information for a further six months after which we will destroy all data we hold about you unless there is a lawful reason to retain this such as ongoing legal action in respect of arrears. You can ask us for a copy of our retention periods by contacting us at dataprotection@probrookproperties.co.uk

Your Rights

The law gives you a number of rights to control what personal information is used by us and how it is used by us.

You can ask for access to the information we hold on you

You have the right to ask for the information we have about you. When we receive a request from you in writing, we must give you access to what personal information we’ve recorded about you.

However, we can’t let you see any parts of a record which contain:

• Confidential information about other people;
• May be held in preparation to defend legal claims.

This applies to personal information that is in both paper and electronic records. If you ask us, we’ll also let others see your record (except if one of the points above applies).

A request for personal information can be made via email or in writing. This is known as a subject access request. In order to make a subject access request you will need to provide the following information:

• your name
• your address
• proof of identity and signature
• enough information to identify your records

What types of documents could I submit as proof of ID?

• Copy passport with signature (please remove your passport number)
• Copy driving license picture with signature (please remove your driver number)
• Copy of signed tenancy or contract with us

You can write to us at the following address:

ProBrook Properties

Data Protection Compliance

79 St. Georges Road

Glasgow

G3 6JA

Alternatively email us at dataprotection@probrookproperties.co.uk (Please ensure you attach your identity documents with the document reference numbers removed).

We will not start your subject access request until we are satisfied that you have provided us with enough information for us to identify you. Once you have made a request you will receive an acknowledgement and your request should be answered within 31 days. In certain circumstances, we can take longer but we will tell you if we feel we may need longer without undue delay from when we receive your request.

If you can’t ask for your records in writing, we’ll make sure there are other ways that you can. If you have any queries about access to your information please contact Emma Park on 0141 339 3050.

You can ask to change information you think is inaccurate

You should let us know if you disagree with information we may have recorded about you.

We may not always be able to change or remove that information but we’ll correct factual inaccuracies and may include your comments in the record to show that you disagree with it.

Please contact us at dataprotection@probrookproperties.co.uk if you would like to request a change to the data we hold.

You can ask to delete information (right to erasure)

In some circumstances you can ask for your personal information to be deleted, for example:

• Where your personal information is no longer needed for the reason it was collected in the first place;
• Where you have removed your consent for us to use your information (provided there is no other legal reason us to use it);
• Where there is no legal reason for the use of your information;
• Where deleting the information is a legal requirement.

Where your personal information has been shared with others, we’ll do what we can to make sure those using your personal information comply with your request for erasure. Please note that we can’t delete your information where:

• we’re required to have it by law;
• it is necessary for legal claims.

You can ask to limit what we use your personal data for

You have the right to ask us to restrict what we use your personal information for where:

• you have identified inaccurate personal information, and have told us of it;
• where we have no legal reason to use that information but you want us to restrict what we use it for rather than erase the information altogether.

We will assess whether you have a right to a restriction and where restriction of use has been granted, we’ll inform you before we carry on using your personal information. Where possible we’ll seek to comply with your request, but we may need to hold or use information because we are required to by law or we have a legal basis to do so, such as a contract.

You can ask to have your information moved to another provider (data portability)

You have the right to ask for your personal information to be given back to you or another service provider of your choice in a commonly used format. This is called data portability.

However, this only applies if we’re using your personal information with consent (not where we are processing your personal information for contractual, legitimate interests, legal obligations or vital interests as a legal basis) and if decisions were made by a computer and not a human being.

It’s likely that data portability won’t apply to most of the services you receive from ProBrook Properties.

Right to understand Automated Decisions made about you

You can ask to have any computer made decisions explained to you, and details of how we may have ‘risk profiled’ you.

You have the right to question decisions made about you by a computer, unless it’s required for any contract you have entered, required by law, or you’ve consented to it.

You also have the right to object if you are being ‘profiled’. Profiling is where decisions are made about you based on certain things in your personal information, e.g. your health.

When your personal information is used to profile you, to deliver the most appropriate service to you, you will be informed.

If you have concerns regarding automated decision making, or profiling, please contact us via email: dataprotection@probrookproperties.co.uk We will be able to advise you about how we are using your information.

How to tell us of a data breach

ProBrook Properties take responsibility to protect the personal information held about those with whom we require to hold data very seriously. We are accountable for our processing and take necessary technical and operational steps to information security protections. If you suspect your personal information or that of others may have been at risk of a data protection breach please tell us by emailing us: dataprotection@probrookproperties.co.uk