Contact centre privacy notice

About us

The contact centre is the main point of contact for residents, businesses, and visitors who need to access the services and information provided by Ealing Council. The contact centre handles enquiries, complaints, requests, and feedback across a range of channels, including phone, email, webchat, social media and face to face. The contact centre aims to provide high-quality customer service, resolve issues at the first point of contact, and signpost customers to the most appropriate service or organisation.

What kind of information do you collect about me?

We currently collect and process the following information:

  • name
  • telephone number
  • address
  • email address
  • national insurance number 
  • date of births for all household members (housing benefits and council tax reduction only)
  • service account and reference numbers
  • details of occupancy or tenancy
  • details of income from earnings, benefits, pensions, savings and any capital for non-dependant residents in the household
  • gender (housing benefits and council tax reduction only)
  • ethnicity (housing benefits and council tax reduction only)

How we get the personal information and why do we have it?

Some of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by you to answer queries related to:

  • housing benefits
  • council tax
  • council tax reduction
  • housing repairs for local authority tenants 
  • communal housing repairs for leaseholders in local authority owned property [where applicable]
  • environmental services including:
    • building control
    • business waste
    • highways and street lighting
    • parks
    • pest control
    • planning
    • pollution control including noise complaints
    • street services
    • trees

We also receive personal information indirectly, from the following sources in the 
following scenarios:

  • Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) - To determine who is entitled to receive council tax reduction or housing benefit and for what period

Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the lawful basis we rely on for processing this information are: 

  • (a) We have a legal obligation.
  • (b) We need it to perform a public task

We collect your personal information from:

  • application forms
  • additional information you provide 
  • correspondence you send us
  • information you or your representative provides in respect of legal action 
  • information collected by our staff on the phone or in face-to-face interviews
  • third party agencies such as the DWP
  • external referrals to the council for example voluntary and community agencies

We collect and hold your personal information for the following purposes, to:

  • provide you with the services or products that you have requested from us
  • communicate with you about your account, orders, or enquiries
  • comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, such as tax, accounting, and anti-money laundering laws
  • protect our legitimate interests, such as preventing fraud, resolving disputes, and enforcing our terms and conditions

We only collect and hold the information that is necessary for the purposes stated above. We do not collect or hold any information that is excessive, irrelevant, or outdated.

How we store your personal information 

Your information is securely stored on our IT systems and manual filing systems. We have strict procedures for the way this is done. All information about you is treated as confidential and with respect.  

How long do we keep your personal information for?

We keep your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which we collected it, and to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations. The retention period may vary depending on the type of information, the nature of our relationship with you, and the applicable laws and regulations. For example, we may keep your personal information for:

  • call recordings will be stored securely and retained for a minimum of 90 days, after which they will be deleted. Any recordings which may need to be used for the purposes of criminal proceedings or longer-term investigations that have been extracted from the system, will be kept in a secure place until any such proceedings and investigations have come to an end. At this point, they will be deleted. 
  • 24 months after the last activity on your CRM account, for customer service and analysis purposes
  • indefinitely, if we have a legal duty to do so, such as for fraud prevention, dispute resolution, or legal claims.

Your data protection rights

Under data protection law, you have rights including:

Your right of access

You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information. This is called a subject access request.

Your right to rectification

You have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete. 

Your right to erasure

You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.

Your right to data portability

You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.

The council’s data protection officer is Mrs L Cox, whom you can contact on: dataprotection@ealing.gov.uk or telephone 020 8825 5124 during office hours.

How to complain

For more general information, please see the council’s corporate privacy statement.