Data Protection Act

Residents’ Guide

What is the Data Protection Act?

The Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) is UK legislation making new provisions for the regulation of processing of personal information, including the obtaining, holding, use or disclosure of such information.

It defines a set of regulations and guidelines Lewisham Council and Lewisham Homes must follow when handling your personal information. The DPA refers to these regulations and guidelines as Data Protection Principles.

The principles include such statements as:

We must tell you how we may use your information
We must give you access to the information we are holding (known as a Subject Access Request).

The purpose of this article is to tell you how your information may be used by Lewisham Council as you landlord and Lewisham Homes their managing agents.

How we use your Personal Data?

Personal data will be processed in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998. In this respect the data controllers for your tenancy are the London Borough of Lewisham and Lewisham Homes Ltd.

During your tenancy we will collect and process information about you and members of your household for the following purposes:

managing your tenancy and the London Borough of Lewisham property it relates to,
monitoring compliance with the terms of your tenancy agreement,
delivering support for special needs to you or any member of your household within an agreed support plan, and
conducting surveys in order to monitor and improve our services.

Unless we specifically advise you otherwise, we will only collect and process personal information that we need in order to carry out these functions.
This personal information may be stored on our computer systems and/or a tenancy file. It is held securely and we have security measures in place to prevent it from being accessed by any unauthorised person.

From time to time we may need to provide third parties with personal information relating to you or members of your household or obtain personal information relating to you or members of your household from third parties. However, this will only be so that we can accomplish the purposes described above. We may also disclose your personal details if required to do so by law or any Governmental body.

We try to deal with instances of rent arrears without the involvement of third parties. However, in cases of unresolved arrears and those where arrears remain outstanding after the termination of a tenancy agreement by either party, we may disclose personal details to tracing and/or debt collection agencies.

For further information on the purposes of processing you can access both Lewisham Council’s and Lewisham Homes notifications on the Information Commissioners website, www.ico.gov.uk

Resident Involvement

Lewisham Homes encourages residents to become involved in helping us to improve the services that we provide. Should you decide to join our resident involvement database we will maintain information about you on a separate database used specifically for this purpose.

We may use this information to contact you and for consultation exercises.

How can I apply to see the Personal Data you hold about me?

There is a statutory charge of £10 for submitting a Subject Access Request and, by law, have 40 calendar days in which to collect and deliver the information, subject to exemptions. You can apply by writing to:

Data Protection Officer,
Lewisham Homes,
9 Holbeach Road,
Catford,
London,
SE6 4TW,
Tel: 020 8613 7680
Email: dataprotection@lewishamhomes.org.uk