Fair processing notices - Help to Buy Stoke-on-Trent

How we use your data

At Stoke-on-Trent City Council we take your privacy seriously and will only keep and use your personal information for reasons the law requires or allows.  We are the data controller for the personal information we hold about you in relation to Help to Buy Stoke-on-Trent.  In order to comply with data protection legislation we must be sure you understand how we use this information.

When you use the Help to Buy Stoke-on-Trent scheme we collect information about:

  • Applicants' right to reside in the UK, including nationality
  • Applicants' name, address, contact details and ages, date of birth, marital status and gender
  • Applicants' address history including address, and dates of occupancy
  • Applicants’ family members within the same household including name, contact details, ages, household income from employment, pensions and benefits
  • Applicants'  annual household income
  • Landlord details including name and address, mobile telephone number, business telephone number and email address
  • Employment history including name and address of the employer, job title, start date, salary, and the employers phone number and email address
  • Details of your connection to the area and the names and addresses of family members who provide the local connection to the area.
  • Documentary evidence such as passports, P60s etc to evidence the information provided.
  • Financial advisor / mortgage broker name, address, email and telephone number.

We only keep this data for the time specified in our retention schedule or as required by law.

The purposes for which the data will be used are:-.

To check eligibility for the Help to Buy Stoke-on-Trent scheme and to ensure that the scheme is sustainable and achieves the aims, eligibility criteria and conditions that have been devised to determine applications. Data has been collected as part of the application process to allow this to be carried out.

We are able to do this because in doing so we are carrying out our public task.  This is because it is a task in the public interest which is done to fulfil part of our role under housing legislation.

We may share data with our internal audit team to evaluate the effectiveness of the organisation’s risk management, control and governance processes.  We may also share your data with the council's fraud team to help to prevent and detect fraud.

Data protection law provides you with certain rights, however not all of these rights will be available to you in all situations.  Where we are under a legal duty to use data for a particular purpose you will not have the right to prevent it being used in that way.

A full list of the rights you may have, under data protection law, is given below: 

  • You can ask to see the information we hold about you.
  • You can ask what is being done with the information we hold about you.
  • You can ask to have some of the data we hold about you deleted.
  • You can ask us to review a decision made about you by a computer, and ask for a new decision to be made by a person.
  • You can ask us to stop processing the data we hold about you
  • You can ask us to make changes to data about you that you believe is inaccurate.
  • In some circumstances you can ask us to help you move your information to another organisation.
  • You can ask us to restrict or limit what we do with your data, for example if you believe the data we hold is inaccurate, or if you believe the processing in unlawful.

If you need to contact us about Help to Buy please contact HelptoBuyStoke-on-Trent@stoke.gov.uk

Who to contact if you have questions

If you wish to contact us in relation to any of your information rights, email foi@stoke.gov.uk or write to Information Rights Team, Floor 2, Civic Centre, Glebe Street, Stoke-on-Trent ST4 1HH.

Complete the online form

If you wish to complain about how your personal information has been handled by Stoke-on-Trent City Council, contact the information rights team in the first instance using the details above. If you are not satisfied you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF, or call 03031231113

Information Commissioner's Office website