Customer services

The London Borough of Hounslow is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. Through this Privacy Notice we have sought to be as transparent as possible to fully explain how your personal data is held and processed.

Under Data Protection law, the London Borough of Hounslow is a Data Controller and we are responsible for collecting and processing your personal information about you in order to provide a public service and meet our statutory obligation. Processing includes the organisation, retrieval, consultation, use and deletion or destruction of information and its disclosure to other agencies.

This privacy notice tells you what to expect when the council collects personal information. This privacy notice covers contact with the council and its officers directly, through email, telephone and the website. The privacy notice will continue to be monitored and updated. You are advised to check this page from time to time.

The information you provide will be processed mainly in connection with the administration of the services. A full list of what information we control and process and for what purposes is set out in our notification with the Information Commissioner's Register of Data Controllers. Our registration number is Z5761176. You can view our registration on the Information Commissioner's website.

Information we collect

When you contact us by phone, email or through the Council’s website we may need to collect personal information about you or your family so that the appropriate service can be provided. The information we require from you may include personal information, such as:

Contact details – name, address, email address, telephone number etc
Date of birth
Proof of Identity
National Insurance Number
Services you receive
Financial details for purposes of making payments
Housing information relating to your council tenancy
IP Address (if using our website)

We may also collect special categories of personal data that may include:

Racial or ethnic origin
Gender and sexual orientation

It will only be necessary to collect this type of information where it is of relevance to the request you are making.

Why we need your information?

We use your personal data within the rules set out in the Data Protection law and we will only collect data that is absolutely necessary. Any information we collect about you will be done strictly in accordance with the Data Protection law.

We process your information for the following services:

Births, death and marriage
Blue badges
Recycling and waste collection
Voting and elections
Housing Repairs
Housing Tenancy
Pest Control
Reporting environmental issues such as fly tipping, pollution, graffiti etc

How we process your data

We process this data for the following reasons:

where you have consented to the processing
to ensure we meet our legal requirements
to allow us to communicate and provide services appropriate to your needs
to process financial transactions
where necessary to protect citizens from harm or injury
to conduct research or statistical analysis that allows us to target and plan the provision of services
to identify residents/users for the purpose of notifying them of proposed or planned changes to services that may affect them
to assist the council in responding to emergencies or major accidents. This allows the council, in conjunction with the emergency services, to identify citizens who may need additional support.
To carry out a public task.

Please note phone calls to our customer service team may be recorded for training and quality improvement purposes.

Who your information may be shared with (internally and externally)

If we are required to, we will only share your information with internal departments and other service providers, contractors and/or partner bodies, but only where it is necessary, either to:

comply with a legal obligation,
where permitted under the Data Protection law,
where the disclosure is necessary for the purposes of the prevention and/or detection of crime,
where it is necessary to allow a third party working for or on behalf of the council.

We will strive to ensure that any personal data in our care will be kept safe and that where your information is disclosed to a third party, we will seek to ensure that the third party has sufficient systems and procedures in place to prevent the loss or damage of personal data.

We will not use your personal data for third party marketing purposes without your prior express consent.

How long will we keep your information?

We review our retention periods of the information we hold about you on a regular basis. We are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory obligations. We will keep your information on our records as long you remain a customer and ensure not to keep it longer than necessary.

Data Matching and Auditing

We are required by law to protect the public funds we administer. We may use the information you provide to us for the prevention and detection of crime. We may also share this information with other bodies that are responsible for auditing or administering public funds including the Department for Work and Pensions, other local authorities, HM Revenue and Customers and the Police.

The council uses data matching as a way of processing large volumes of information. While this can be a useful way of detecting fraud, it also enables us to identify information that is inaccurate or out of date, helping us comply with Data Protection law, while improving service provision.

As part of the council’s fraud prevention and detection activities, the council participates in the National Fraud Initiative (NFI). The data matching exercise is run by the Cabinet Office.

More about the National Fraud Initiative (NFI)