Finance Revenues & Benefits Privacy Notice
1. Purpose of the processing and the legal basis for the processing:
Fife Council use the personal information provided by you to manage services such as:
- your Council Tax account, any liability to pay rent for a Council property, Business Rates, your entitlement to Housing Benefit and/or Council Tax Reduction;
- Education Benefits including free school meals, school clothing grants and Education Maintenance Allowance;
- any potential monies owed in respect of Sundry Debt;
- assessing your contribution towards long term care for adults and older people; and
- assessing your eligibility for any benefits and grants you may be entitled to.
We have a statutory function to carry out the above duties under various legislation including the following:
- Local Government Finance Act 1992
- Local Government (Scotland) Act 1975
- Council Tax (Administration and Enforcement) (Scotland) Regulations 1992
- Social Security Act 1998
- Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992
- Child Support Pensions and Social Security Act 2000 - Sections 68-71 and Schedule 7
- Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016
- Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 - Section 115
- Human Rights Act 1998 - Schedule 1 - The Articles
- National Assistance (Assessment of Resources) Regulations 1992
- Charging for Residential Accommodation Guide (CRAG)
2. Please describe the categories of personal data processed by your Service or service:
Fife Council collects and processes a range of personal information about you. This may include:
- Your name, address and contact details, including email address and telephone number, date of birth, ip address and timestamp
- Ownership and/or tenancy details for your domestic property(s)
- Ownership and/or tenancy details for non-domestic property(s)
- Partner details
- Information about other people living in your household including children
- Employment and banking details
- Income details
- Savings and capital details
Fife Council will collect the above information in a number of ways including application forms, passports and other identity documents, correspondence from you, customer interviews, meetings and other assessment activities. We will also collect data about you from third parties, for example The Department of Work and Pensions, Tracing Agencies, Sheriff Officers, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, Registered Social Landlords, Private Landlords, Care Providers, Registers of Scotland, Office of Public Guardian, Accountants in Bankruptcy, the Scottish Social Security Agency and other Council Services.
Fife Council and the DWP work together and share information often to provide a number of services. Fife Council and the DWP are joint data controllers for services such as Housing Benefit.
Any personal data you provide will be stored in a range of Fife Councils IT systems.
3. Any recipient or categories of recipients of the personal data:
We provide your information to our suppliers to enable us to deliver a service to you. We also share the minimum amount of Council tax information with other Council Services on a case by case basis where it is necessary to enable them to deliver a Service to you and where it is necessary for them to fulfil a legal obligation. We may share some information about you with external suppliers to help us prevent/detect crime/fraudulent applications or debt recovery. We may also share information with the Department of Work and Pensions in relation to Housing Benefit.
4. The source the personal data originates from and whether it came from publicly accessible sources (including information gathered about third parties eg where we have gathered information about a third party during discussions with a service user):
We obtain information about you from publicly accessible sources such Registers of Scotland and the Voters Roll.
5. Whether the provision of personal data is part of a statutory or contractual requirement or obligation and possible consequences of failing to provide the personal data:
You are obliged to provide Fife Council with data as part of our statutory function as defined in the list above of appropriate legislation. In the event that we did not request and use this information then it would not be possible to carry out our statutory functions.
6. The existence of automated decision making, including profiling and information about how decisions are made, the significance and the consequences:
Automated information relating to benefit entitlement is received from the Department for Work and Pensions and is used to amend entitlement to Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction.
In terms of collecting Council Tax, the IT system we use will automatically calculate the amount to be paid by Direct Debit.
