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Privacy Notice - Customer Support Centre

Privacy Notice - Customer Support Centre

What this privacy notice is for

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

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.

What we use your information for

The Customer Support Centre is the main point of contact for residents to access a range of frontline services by telephone, email and face-to-face. Calls are recorded for training and quality purposes.

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

  • Council Tax
  • Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction
  • Housing Options
  • Free School Meals
  • Elections
  • Environmental Services (parks and street cleaning)
  • Waste Management
  • Payments
  • Environmental Health
  • Street Lighting
  • Libraries
  • Highways
  • Registrars
  • School Admissions
  • My Account
  • Satisfaction Surveys
  • Blue Badge
  • Early Help
  • Adult Social Care
  • Support and Inclusion
  • Foodbank

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.

What categories of personal information do 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.

Category of personal data

Special/Sensitive

Name

  

Address

  

Telephone number(s)

  

Email address

  

Employer details

  

Self-employment details including the nature of business

  

Income and expenditure details

  

Bank details

  

Capital details

  

Household composition

  

Date of birth

  

National insurance number

  

School details for dependants

  

Relationship

  

Landlord and rent details if applicable

  

Other properties owned

  

Date entered UK

  

Temporary absence details

Housing Status

  

Student status including educational establishment

  

Health (Physical/Mental)

Criminal convictions and offences

Yes

Yes

Nationality

Yes

Racial or ethnic origin

Yes 

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 the 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 Customer Support Centre please refer to service-specific privacy notices.

Information sharing/recipients

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

  • Bulky Bobs: administers the collection of bulky household items on behalf of the council.
  • The Police: if they are trying to determine your current address for the detection of crime.
  • Our telephony software provider may have to access to our customer satisfaction and email management systems on occasion where there is a fault, to perform necessary upgrades or to host information on our behalf. Our current software provider is 8x8.
  • Other software providers include:
    • Microsoft Dynamics – Customer Relations Management System
    • Northgate – Blue Badge processing
    • Manage Blue Badge (Department for Transport) – Blue Badge
    • APS Group – Blue Badge Printing
    • Telsolutions – SMS text messaging 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:

  • Adult Social Care: for the purpose of assessment of care needs and potential safeguarding matters.
  • Children’s Safeguarding: to ensure appropriate support is provided under The Children and Families Act 2014 and enable the Council to provide local Council Tax discounts to Care leavers up to the age of 21.
  • Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (M.A.S.H) and Early Help to refer vulnerable people for additional support.
  • Environment Health: to support housing enforcement activities in relation to your property subject to legal action due to disrepair or abandonment.
  • School Admissions: to establish eligibility of Free School Meals.
  • Get Oldham Working: to provide career guidance and educational support.
  • Health Care professionals: for the purpose of a further assessment if required as part of the Blue Badge application process.

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 Tax.
  • Solicitors: who are acting on behalf of you or the council.
  • Landlords: to enable the Council to send the correct bill for Council Tax.
  • Landlords: to enable the Council to pay the correct amount of Housing Benefit.

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 the 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

How long do 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.

Call recordings will be kept for one year only.

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