As an Ealing Council tenant or leaseholder, the council’s landlord services need to use your personal information to provide services to you. This also applies if you are applying to use any of our services.
These services include:
- providing, managing, developing and selling housing products
- providing property management and property maintenance services
- identifying a need for and then providing support services through our own teams or partner agencies
- delivering the councils strategic objectives to know and understand its residents to inform and shape local services
- any other service provided by Ealing Council as a local authority *
* Other Ealing Council services may have their own privacy statement covering their specific nature and activity.
Lawful basis for processing your information
Ealing Council is committed to holding and processing your personal information safely and lawfully.
The primary legislation covering the collection and processing of your personal information for this purpose includes:
- Housing Act 2004
- Localism Act 2011
- Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023
Under article 6 of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the lawful bases we rely on for processing your information are:
- we have a contractual obligation
- we have a legal obligation
- we have a vital interest
- we need it to perform a public task
We have housing and public protection related duties under the following legislation:
- Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003
- Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014
- Building Safety Act 2022
- Care Act 2014
- Children Act 1989 and 2004
- Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002
- Crime and Disorder Act 1998
- Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994
- Equality Act 2010
- Fire Safety Act 2021
- The Fire Safety (Residential Evacuation Plans) (England) Regulations 2025
- The Hazards in Social Housing (Prescribed Requirements) (England) Regulations 2025
- Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974
- The Heat Network (Metering and Billing) Regulations 2014
- Housing Act 1985, 1988, 1996 and 2004
- Housing and Planning Act 2016
- Housing and Regeneration Act 2008
- Human Rights Act 1998
- Landlord and Tenant Act 1985
- Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993
- Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014
- Localism Act 2011
- Mental Capacity Act 2005
- Prevention of Social Housing Fraud Act 2013
- Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023
What information will we collect?
We will hold, access and process personal data which includes but is not limited to yours and your household members’ defined characteristics, personal financial circumstances, evidence of identification, support needs, disability, health needs, medical information, reasonable adjustment requirements and any third party support where you have provided consent for them to act on your behalf.
Specifically, this information may include some or all of the following:
- name including any previous known names
- names and details relating to all household members
- date of birth
- National Insurance number
- phone numbers
- email address
- ID such as passport
- photograph
- marital status
- gender or gender identity
- nationality
- ethnicity
- religion
- language
- sexuality
- benefits
- health, disability, support needs, evacuation support needs and reasonable adjustment needs
- third party support contact details
- financial and income details
- employment status
- housing needs
- criminal convictions (spent and unspent)
For the particular purposes of this privacy statement, personal data is provided by you or by another person on your behalf or a third party from whom the council is lawfully able to share your personal data or you have given them your separate consent.
We will also collect contact details such as your telephone number and email address for you and your nominated representatives. As we use these to contact you email or text, it is important that you keep us informed if any of your details change.
Most of the information we hold will come from you with your consent. Some information may be provided by one or more of the following:
- other council departments
- your GP or other health care professional
- elected members (local councillors or MP)
- previous landlords and property agents
- solicitors or legal representatives
- financial or mortgage advisers
- other relevant support agencies working with you
Where you are providing information about household members, we assume that you have obtained their full knowledge and consent.
What do we do with the information about you?
We may need certain information from you to provide the service that you require. If you choose not to share the information we ask for, we might not be able to give you the service.
Information you give us will be used to:
- check and verify your application for housing and entitlement to be rehoused
- manage your tenancy or leasehold relationship with us
- identify and offer services to help support you in your home
- deliver management, maintenance and other landlord-related services in conjunction with our service partners and statutory and voluntary agencies
- prevent and detect crime
- consult you about the services you receive and to offer opportunities to get involved in how the council runs its services
- review existing services and how they are performing and to plan and implement new services and initiatives
Relevant information you give to us will be shared with partner agencies, third parties, contractors and sub-contractors in order for services to be provided to you. Relationships with these third parties will be covered by a Data Sharing Agreement that controls how they must use and hold the data shared with them.
Who will we share your information with?
We may need to share personal information we hold about you with other organisations that we work with who provide services on our behalf or organisations we are legally permitted to share your information with such as:
- Regulator of Social Housing
- Ofgem in relation to heat network regulation
- Housing Ombudsman Service
- Energy Ombudsman in relation to heat networks
- agencies committed to protecting public funds and/or preventing fraud: for example, the National Fraud Initiative and the National Crime Agency
- the government’s continuous recording of social housing lettings and sales system (CORE)
- police and other relevant authorities (for example Department for Work and Pensions, Probation Service, HM Revenue & Customs) in relation to the prevention or detection of crime, fraud and antisocial behaviour (ASB)
- other statutory organisations: for example. social services, health authorities, Homes England, Greater London Authority, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) where required to exercise their statutory functions
- county courts in relation to rent arrears, service charge arrears and breaches of tenancy or lease agreement and any other courts that cases are escalated to including the High Court and Court of Appeal
- for leaseholders service charge disputes may be referred to the first-tier tribunal (property chamber)
- protector insurance in relation to resident insurance claims
- Right to Buy valuations information will be shared with our contracted valuers (BNP Paribas Real Estate)
- Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) in relation to any data breach claims
- Coroner’s Office as required
- Third party support agencies/support workers or other representatives where a resident has provided written consent
To deliver services provided on behalf of the council we will share your contact details such as your phone number with our repairs contractors.
Where you have reported a Reasonable adjustments: a legal duty - GOV.UK requirement to us, we will record these in our housing management system. We will share reasonable adjustment needs with our repairs contractors to deliver services provided on behalf of the council.
We will share information about health conditions, vulnerabilities and evacuation support needs with emergency services including the London Fire Brigade in case of emergencies such as a fire or an emergency evacuation.
We may share your details with utility companies in certain circumstances such as if you did not register your liability at the start of your tenancy at the property or following the end of the council’s liability at a property up until a new tenancy starts.
If your property is served by a communal heating system (heat network), we will share your details with relevant contracted metering and billing agents.
We will share your name, address and contact details with our external partner which carries out resident surveys, TLF Research (The Leadership Factor). The council undertakes satisfaction surveys on a monthly basis based on a sample of our tenants. New tenants will be surveyed within 6 months of the tenancy start date.
We may also share information when required by law, for example where we are ordered by a court or to protect an individual from immediate harm.
CCTV
We operate CCTV systems across our estates. These systems capture and record images of residents or members of the public who are entering and using the communal areas (entrance halls, foyers and lifts) of some of our housing blocks. Where we have CCTV systems in place, we always display signs notifying residents of this.
Some of our housing hubs have CCTV and you may be recorded when you visit them. CCTV is used to provide security and to protect both our visitors and communities. CCTV will only be viewed when necessary, such as to detect or prevent crime. CCTV footage is stored for 31 days.
We use CCTV for the following purposes:
- prevent and tackle antisocial behaviour
- prevent or detect crime
- identify and prosecute offenders
- protect our employees
- protect our homes, offices, and assets
- improve personal safety and reduce the fear of crime
Further information about CCTV can be found on the council website
Photographs
We may take photographs at our resident engagement events, at our properties and in our communities to use for general marketing and publicity. Photographs of individuals will only be used for those purposes with your consent.
Resident engagement
We encourage residents to become involved in helping us to improve the services that we provide. Should you decide to be kept informed about resident engagement activities and ways to get involved you will be added to the resident engagement database. The resident engagement team will ask you for the following information to ensure that they can support you to get involved:
- name
- address
- contact details
- gender
- ethnicity
- age
- tenancy or lease type
- any communication preferences
- preferred language
- any support needs including any reasonable adjustments you require
Managing arrears
We use a system called RentSense to manage arrears and service charge accounts.
If you are in arrears, we may use the system to send you a text message reminder, but sometimes having a conversation is the best way we can help.
We may also send you text messages from the system with a link to our debit / credit card payment system so that you can easily make a payment.
How long will you keep information about you?
Records are kept only for as long as necessary; this is either by law or good practices or in accordance with the council’s retention rules.
For more information regarding records retention, please see the council's general privacy notice
How do you know that the information about you is kept safely?
All the information we collect is stored securely on our IT systems and manual or electronic filing systems. We have strict procedures for the way this is done. All information about you is treated as confidential and with respect. There are also clear rules and guidance about storing, recording, and sharing information which staff receive training on.
What rights do you have in relation to your information?
- right to be informed - through our privacy notices, we will be open and transparent about how and why we use your personal information
- right of access - you have the right to ask us what personal information we hold about you and to request a copy of the information; this is known as a Subject Access Request
- right to rectification - you can ask us to rectify your personal data if it is inaccurate or incomplete. Please help us to keep our records by informing us if they change
- right to erasure - also known as the right to be forgotten - in some circumstances, you can ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no legitimate reason for its continued processing. This right is not automatic, as we will consider each request and balance this against our need to continue processing the data. This may be connected to our retention schedules on how long we keep information after our relationship or the reason for processing has ended
- right to data portability - if it is helpful for you to move, copy or transfer personal data we hold about you, across different services, you may be able to ask us to do this
- right to object - you can tell us if you object to the processing of your personal data:
- if it is to be used for historical research purposes and profiling; this reason is not an automatic right, and we will consider each request
- for the purposes of direct marketing
- where a decision which has a legal or significant effect on you is made solely by way of automated means - you have the right to ask us to stop doing this, or show that we have measures to protect you, including how the decision has been made and that the system is operating correctly
Who should you contact if you want further information or to complain about the use of your personal information?
The council’s data protection officer is Mrs L Cox, who you can contact by emailing dataprotection@ealing.gov.uk or telephone 0208 825 5124 during office hours.
For independent advice about data protection, privacy, e-privacy and data sharing issues, you can contact the Information Commissioner using the following details:
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire SK9 5AF
Telephone: 0303 123 1113
Email: casework@ico.org.uk
Website: www.ico.org.uk