Who are we?

The Council is a local authority providing a broad range of local government services, including Council Tax billing, social services, processing planning applications, waste collection etc. 

The Council is a registered data controller with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), registration number Z7517364.

As part of the Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction, Free School Meals, Discretionary Payments application process, London Borough of Barking and Dagenham Council will collect personal data about you and your family.

This information collation will include:

• details about you, such as your address, telephone number, email address, National Insurance number, date of birth, household composition and income & capital details
• other relevant information needed to process your claim such as your landlord details

We also use the following special category personal information:

• race
• health
• financial information

We will use this data to process your claim and may check some of the information with other sources to ensure this data is accurate.

How we use your personal information

We will collect information about you (where applicable) to:

• process your claim for Housing Benefit and/or Council Tax Reduction
• consider and process any Discretionary Payment Applications
• to allow the council to communicate and provide services appropriate to your needs, for example Free School Meal applications, available applicable utility discounts and providing Local Welfare Assistance
• keeping the electoral roll right
• to meet our obligations under housing legislation, for example licensing private rented properties
• undertaking checks where a child is missing education
• collecting council tax debts owed to us
• for consultation purposes, in connection with the administration of Council Tax and Benefits (as required under Schedule 1A of the Local Government Finance Act 1992)
• to ensure safe systems of work for staff visiting / meeting with customers in their homes / at the Customer Service Centre
• where the processing is necessary to comply with legal obligations, for example the prevention and/or detection of crime including fraud
• protect public funds
• combine information held about you with data held on other council service systems to create a ‘single view’ of you or your family on to one system.  Using our resident’s information in this way is important to us because it enables us to:
  • provide staff with information about what benefits an individual is claiming and what they may be entitled to, to enable targeted income maximisation activity.
  • compare debts levels of residents to allow greater prioritisation, debt management and to support residents in paying priority bills and learning general household income management skills.
  • support more residents before they reach crisis point and to self-manage their financial affairs.
  • identify households that are becoming more vulnerable so we can offer support at an earlier stage to help them.  This is known as predictive analytics.  More information about the use of data in predictive analytics can be found on our General privacy notice page

Lawful basis for processing your personal information

The Council has to have a lawful reason to process your information.  As such the Council will process your application as follows:  

The legislation that requires local authorities to collect this information from its residents is as follows:

• Social Security Administration Act
• Housing Benefit Regulations
• Local Government Finance Act
• the prevention/detection of crime, including false representation in accordance with the Fraud Act

Protecting your personal information

The Council endeavours to ensure that the services we provide comply with all data protection legislation, for example, the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018). 

The Council has appropriate security and controls in place to prevent data loss, for example, hacking attempts, however, we cannot guarantee that the personal information you submit will not be intercepted.

Sharing your personal information

To process your claim(s) we share information under our legal obligations and with partner organisations, including:

• Government departments in connection to a welfare benefit claim
• Internal Council Departments of the purposes of validating any applications or support you may make or have made for other Council services such as Housing Applications, School Placements, Homeless Applications, Homes & Money Hubb, Job Brokers & Right to Buy Applications. Please note that this list is not exhaustive
• The Department for Work and Pensions
• Utility providers under the Local Welfare Provisions, Welfare Reform Act 2012 to allow relevant and applicable discounts to be afforded
• ombudsman and regulatory authorities
• courts and tribunals
• on occasions, your information may be accessed by contracted IT support organisations in the delivery of IT support for both the IT infrastructure and associated systems, for the processes detailed in this privacy notice. Access by IT support will only be for such reasons as fixing any technical issues with software, and any viewing of data will be incidental to this

Your information may also be shared for the prevention of fraud and criminal activity with agencies such as:

• the police
• Immigration Service, Absconder Services and/or UK Border Agency
• health and social care organisations
• other Local Authorities
• If we concerned about your safety, or that of a 3rd Party, we have a duty to contact the appropriate agencies as necessary. Any information shared will be on a need to know basis, with the minimum information necessary being shared.

Retaining your personal information

We will only keep your information for the minimum period necessary. The information outlined in this privacy notice will be kept after all action on your claim has finished and the period required by the council for legal and audit purposes has passed. All information will be held securely and destroyed under confidential conditions.

If you have a live claim we keep your information for the life of your claim plus a six-year retention period after your claim ends. This period is required by the council for legal and audit purposes and maybe extended for the purposes of prevention & detection of Fraud.  Information identified for destruction will be securely destroyed, in line with data protection legislation. 

International Transfer of personal information

Information is not transferred outside of the UK.

Automated decision-making / profiling

We do not use your personal information for automated decision making.

Cookies

To learn more about cookies, please visit our general privacy notice page.

Your Individual Rights

The General Data Protection provides you with certain rights in relation to your personal information, such as accessing the information we hold about you.  To learn more about your rights, please go to:  https://www.lbbd.gov.uk/general-privacy-notice

You also have a right to make a complaint about our handling of your personal data to the Information Commissioner's Office.

Last Reviewed   

Date: 25/03/2025