Data Protection

The law around data protection is changing and, from 25 May this year, you’ll have more rights relating to how we process your personal data.

You may have heard the General Data Protection Regulation – or GDPR for short – mentioned recently, and this is the new UK law which affects organisations like Leazes Homes and how they are able to use your data.

What does this mean?

GDPR applies to personal data – this is any information that can identify you as an individual person (either on its own or when combined with other data). It can be in any format, including photographs and online accounts.

GDPR places much stronger controls on the processing of more sensitive personal data and the impact of not keeping this private.

Organisations must be clear and transparent about how personal data is processed, by whom and why.

Data processing principles

GDPR has six principles and personal data must be processed according to these. The principles state that data must be:

1: processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner
2: collected for specific purposes
3: adequate, relevant, and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which it is processed
4: accurate and up to date
5: stored no longer than is necessary
6: secured to keep it confidential

What are my rights? Individuals’ rights are enhanced and extended in a number of important areas.

Under GDPR you have:

1: The right to be informed
2: The right of access
3: The right to rectification
4: The right to erasure
5: The right to restrict processing
6: The right to data portability
7: The right to object
8: Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling

How do I find out more?

Leazes Homes commissions Karbon Homes to manage the homes that they own. It is necessary for Karbon Homes to process personal data to allocate and support tenants of Leazes Homes.

To be transparent, we have created a “Privacy Notice” that explains what types of personal data are processed, how data is used, who it is shared with and how long we hold it for. You can read that here  – you can also find a glossary of data types, read about legal bases, how we process your data, how we share your data, and find a glossary of our partner organisations, by following the links below.

You can also read much more about the approach our current housing manager, YHN, takes to privacy and data protection here, including who its data sharing partners are, how they process and share data, what types of data they process and share and details about specific clauses in the regulation.

How do I get more information?

For further information about the change to the law, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) as the UK data protection regulator for organisations: www.ico.org.uk / Tel: 0303 1231113