Financial Hardship Programme (Household Support Fund) privacy notice
Kent County Council respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy notice will inform you as to how we look after your personal data and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.
Who we are
Kent County Council collects, uses and is responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are regulated under the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (‘UK GDPR’) and the Data Protection Act 2018. We are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information. Our Data Protection Officer is Benjamin Watts.
The Household Support Fund scheme is funded by UK government to support vulnerable Kent households in need of help with significantly rising living costs and is delivered by KCC’s Financial Hardship Programme. Our Financial Hardship Programme delivers schemes and projects to support Kent residents in, or at risk of, financial hardship.
Personal information we collect and use
Information collected by us
In the course of delivering support to you through our Household Support Fund scheme we will collect the following personal information when you provide it to us:
Personal data
- Your name, gender, address, telephone number, email address, date of birth and details of other household members (including children).
- Your National Insurance number.
- Financial information such as income, benefits and work status.
- Supporting organisations or professionals applying on your behalf.
- Information about your current circumstances and why you require assistance.
- Information about the goods and services you require support with.
Special categories of data
- Information about your racial or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical belief and your sexual orientation is collected for equality monitoring and evaluation purposes only.
- Information about health conditions or disabilities that may be relevant to your circumstances or the support you require.
How we use your personal information
We use your personal information to:
- assess your eligibility for the Household Support Fund schemes:
- Your name, gender, address, telephone number, email address, date of birth and details of other household members (including children).
- Your National Insurance number.
- Financial information such as income, benefits and work status.
- Purchase receipts and payslips.
- Supporting organisations or professionals applying on your behalf.
- Information about your current circumstances and why you require assistance.
- Information about the goods and services you require support with.
- request and arrange delivery of any awarded provision:
- Name, address, telephone number.
- Information about your requirements
- analyse the service we are providing:
- Anonymised statistical reports.
- create a secure and comprehensive record of your application to the scheme:
- Your name, address, telephone number, email address, date of birth and details of any other household members (including children).
- National Insurance number.
- Organisations supporting your application and circumstances if provided.
- fully understand your needs:
- Information about you and your circumstances.
- Information about your requirements.
- equality monitoring only:
- Information such as racial or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical beliefs, your sexual orientation.
Reasons we can collect and use your personal information
When we collect your personal data for the purposes described above, we rely on:
- the lawful basis of public task in Article 6(1) (e) in General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): processing is “necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller”.
In this case the authority to process applications is vested in Kent County Council by the Household Support Fund announced by the Government on 20 February 2023.
When we collect your ‘special categories of personal data’, (such as health, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation) we rely on the following legal bases:
- Processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest.
- Safeguarding of children and of individuals at risk.
- Monitoring equality of opportunity or treatment.
- Processing is necessary for the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health or social care systems and services.
If you do not provide your data, it will limit the effectiveness of the services and support that we are able to offer you.
How long your personal data will be kept
We will only keep the personal data that supports your application for as long as it is needed for the purposes of addressing the cost of living crisis and for audit and payment purposes.
Details of all financial transactions on our accounts are held in line with legislative requirements for the current financial year plus 6 further financial years.
Who we share your personal information with
In the course of providing and administering your application for support, depending on your circumstances we will collect information from, or share it with the following third parties:
- Borough and district councils, housing associations and landlords.
- Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
- HM Revenue and Customs.
- External providers including Cantium Business Solutions Ltd (software support), Agilisys LTD (Kent County Council’s contact centre provider) and Wonde (the organisation administering voucher awards).
- Partner agencies, such as volunteer organisations and statutory organisations.
- Other supporting professionals who are supporting your application.
We will share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities if required by applicable law.
Your rights
Under GDPR you have rights which you can exercise free of charge which allow you to:
- know what we are doing with your information and why we are doing it
- ask to see what information we hold about you (subject access request)
- ask us to correct any mistakes in the information we hold about you
- object to direct marketing
- make a complaint to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO)
- where we have relied upon consent, withdraw consent at any time.
Depending on our reason for using your information you may also be entitled to:
- ask us to delete information we hold about you
- have your information transferred electronically to yourself or to another organisation
- object to decisions being made that significantly affect you
- object to how we are using your information
- stop us using your information in certain ways.
In the instance of being referred to debt advice services, you will be entitled to withdraw your consent to the referral at any time by contacting the Financial Hardship team. The withdrawal of consent would not affect the lawfulness of the processing that took place before its withdrawal.
For further information about your rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, see the guidance from the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) on individuals’ rights under GDPR.
If you would like to exercise a right, please contact the Information Resilience and Transparency Team at data.protection@kent.gov.uk.
Keeping your personal information secure
We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.
Contact
Please contact the Information Resilience and Transparency Team at data.protection@kent.gov.uk to exercise any of your rights, or if you have a complaint about why your information has been collected, how it has been used or how long we have kept it for.
You can contact our Data Protection Officer, Benjamin Watts, at dpo@kent.gov.uk, or write to: Data Protection Officer, Sessions House, Maidstone, Kent ME14 1XQ.
UK GDPR also gives you right to lodge a complaint with Information Commissioner, who may be contacted via the Information Commissioner's website or call 03031 23 11 13.
Read our corporate privacy statement.