What this privacy notice is for

Our core data protection obligations and commitments are set out in the council’s primary privacy notice at

• Data Protection - web page

Updating our privacy notices

We may update or revise our privacy notices at any time so please refer to the version published on our website for the most up to date details

The Contact Centre is the main telephony point of contact for a number of frontline council services. The service is based in the Civic Centre and the opening hours provide a convenient means for residents to access a range of services by telephone and email.

Oldham Council commission Unity Partnership Limited to provide this frontline service on the Council’s behalf.

What we use your information for

We collect or obtain your personal information for and on behalf of the following service(s):

• Council Tax
• Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction
• Free School Meals
• Welfare Rights
• Elections
• Environmental Services (parks and street cleaning)
• Waste Management
• Community Safety
• Payments
• Environmental Health
• Street Lighting
• Libraries
• Galleries
• Highways
• Licensing
• Registrars
• School Admissions
• My Account
• Satisfaction Surveys

We only share your information with other departments within the Council if there is a legal basis to do so for the purposes of delivering other Council activities.

A summary of the service activities we collect and process your data for is attached as Appendix 1.

What categories of personal information we use

Personal information can be anything that identifies and relates to a living person. This can include information that when linked with other information, allows a person to be uniquely identified. For example, this could be your name and contact details.

The law treats some types of personal information as ‘special’ because the information requires more protection due to its sensitivity. This information consists of:

• Racial or ethnic origin
• Sexuality and sexual life
• Religious or philosophical beliefs
• Trade union membership
• Political opinions
• Genetic and bio-metric data
• Physical or mental health
• Criminal convictions and offences

In order to carry out these purposes we collect and obtain the following personal information.

Legal basis for processing

The legal basis for processing and or sharing your personal information is article 6(1) (a); 6(1)

• and 6(1) (e) of the General Data Protection

We will process and share your personal information where:

• We have a legal obligation or it is in the public interest.
• You, or your representative have given
• It is necessary for fraud prevention and the protection of public

If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations, for example to administer the benefit schemes.

For more information regarding the legal basis for processing your information for the services supported by the Contact Centre (listed within Appendix 1) please refer to service specific privacy notices.

Information sharing/recipients

We may share personal information about you with the following organisations:

• The Unity Partnership Ltd: administers the Council Tax, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction and Free School Meals services on behalf of the
• Bulky Bobs: administers the collection of bulky household items on behalf of the
• The Police: if they are trying to determine your current address for the detection of
• Our software providers may have to access to our customer satisfaction and email management systems on occasion where there is a fault, to perform necessary upgrades, to host information on our behalf. Our current software providers are:
  • Blue Square Systems – we use Opinion 8 for customer satisfaction surveys and equality data collection for service users.
  • Mitel Multimedia – we use Mitel for the management of service requests received via email on behalf of several service

We may share your information with other departments within the Council, if there is a legal basis to do so. These services currently include:

• Environment Health: to support housing enforcement activities in relation to your property subject to legal action due to disrepair or

As well as information collected directly from you, we also obtain or receive information from:

• Letting Agents: to enable the Council to send the correct bill for Council
• Solicitors: who are acting on behalf of you or the
• Landlords: to enable the Council to send the correct bill for Council
• Landlords: to enable the Council to pay the correct amount of Housing

If you provide another person or organisation authority to discuss or to act on your behalf, we may share information with them. In all cases we would require evidence you had granted authority before any information is shared.

Data Transfers beyond European Economic Area

We do not transfer any of your personal information outside the European Economic Area (‘EEA’).

Automated Decisions

All the decisions we make about you involve human intervention.

Our Guide to Exercising Your Rights outlines the procedure to ask us for an automated decision to be reviewed by an appropriate officer. This can be found at

• Your Data Rights - web page

How long we keep your data

We will only keep your personal information for as long as it is required by us or other regulatory bodies in order to comply with legal and regulatory requirements or for other regulatory reasons. In most cases this will be a minimum of six years.

Where can I get advice

More information on how to seek advice in order to exercise your rights, raise a concern or complain about the handling of your personal information by the council can be found in the council’s privacy notice which can be found at:

• Data Protection - web page