Data Protection

Kilkenny County Council - Housing Supports privacy notice

In order to provide the most effective and targeted range of social housing services to meet the needs of the citizens of County Kilkenny we will be required to collect, process and use certain types of information about people applying for social housing. Depending on the social housing service being requested the information sought may include 'personal data' as defined by the Data Protection Acts and by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and may relate to the personal circumstances of you (as applicant) and members of your family who may also be part of your housing application.

Why do we have this privacy notice?
Kilkenny County Council has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to privacy and to assure you that in all your dealings with Kilkenny County Council that we will ensure the security of the personal data you provide to us.
Kilkenny County Council creates, collects and processes a vast amount of personal data in various multiple formats on a daily basis. Kilkenny County Council's commitment to you is that the personal data you may be required to supply to us is;

Obtained lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner
Obtained for only specified, explicit and legitimate purposes
Adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary for purpose for which it was obtained
Recorded, stored accurately and securely and where necessary kept up to date
Kept only for as long as is necessary for the purposes for which it was obtained.
Kept in a form which permits identification of the data subject
Processed only in a manner that ensures the appropriate security of the personal data including protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing.

Legal basis for the collection, processing and sharing of personal data as part of social housing provision
Kilkenny County Council as a Housing Authority may, for the purpose of its functions under the Housing Acts of 1966-2014 request all of the information contained in any Housing support application form which has been devised by the Department of Housing, Planning & Local Government for use by all local authorities and by Kilkenny County Council.

Types of Personal data required
In advance of completing a housing support application form you should read the information leaflet which accompanies the form carefully. You should take care to answer all of the questions fully where these are relevant to you and provide the required supporting documentation. Failing to provide a detailed answer to the questions relevant to you or provide the required supporting documentation may result in your application being considered incomplete and delay your application. You will also be required to submit details of the PPS Numbers for all members of your household included on the application form.
All applicants are required to provide information on the following categories of data (where they are applicable)

Personal details of applicant and of any spouse or partner
Nationality details of applicant and of any spouse or partner
Marital details of applicant and of any spouse or partner
Employment details of applicant and of any spouse or partner
Weekly income details of applicant and of any spouse or partner
Details of any other household members seeking accommodation (including children)
Details of any medical or disability grounds which may have a bearing on the application
Details of the current and historical accommodation arrangements of the applicant
Details of any other property or land in which applicants have a financial interest
Details of any public order offences of which the applicant or any member of the household has been convicted
Details of housing supports being sought
List of areas within the boundaries of County Kilkenny where the applicant would accept social housing.

For example, a copy of the social housing support application form and the accompanying information leaflet can be accessed via the following link,

How your personal data will be used/processed by the Housing Section within Kilkenny County Council

Phone numbers and email addresses
When contacting us we may ask you for a contact mobile phone number (or email). If we do, we may use this number to contact you by text (or email) as well as by phone. We will only contact you about matters that affect your application for any housing support, such as payments or to inform you of meetings in relation to your housing application/tenancy. No texts (or emails) will contain any information that could be used to identify you i.e. your name, so that if your phone is lost/stolen the messages could only be matched to the mobile phone the text was sent to.

Electronic storage and processing of your data
The volume of customers the Council serves and range of housing services we provide requires an IT system to manage customer applications. Data from these applications is added to the iHouse IT System (iHouse) and hard copy applications and related documentation is scanned to a document management system (iDocs). The information requested on the forms and stored in these systems is relevant to an assessment of your eligibility for a relevant housing service, whether it be a social housing application, application for a grant, a housing loan or other services and supports. Access to the data is controlled and restricted to relevant staff involved in assessing and processing the various services with other security measures such as passwords.
If you decide to discontinue an application or if you are suspended from the housing list, we will store your application history electronically so that we can more effectively re-engage with you. Housing Department implements the National Retention Policy. This will apply to all paper records.

Sharing of your Personal Data
The data you supply to Kilkenny County Council as part of your application for Social Housing will be used by Kilkenny County Council for the purposes of determining whether you qualify for the provision of housing supports. However, some of your personal data (see list below) may be shared with other service departments within Kilkenny County Council so that you are not being asked to supply the same personal data multiple times i.e.

Name
Address and contact details
PPSN

This personal data will be shared with the service departments such as;
Finance Section Corporate Services
Debt Collection Water & Roads
Environment Fire Services

Kilkenny County Council will also share your data with other statutory bodies/local authorities for the purposes of providing a housing service to you, to ensure the information is accurate, to protect public funds, to recover debt or for the prevention, detection or investigation of offences and for statistical purposes.

If you do not wish that the personal data identified above that you supplied as part of your housing application, you should indicate this to Housing Department in Kilkenny County Council in writing when you are making your application. You can also inform the other sections listed above that you do not wish your personal information from a housing application to be used in your application for their services and you wish to supply a fresh complete set of personal data. If such a request is received, the housing department may not be in a position to provide a housing service to you.

Contacting other public bodies to obtain personal information
The staff in social housing provision may be required, from time to time, for the purpose of carrying out its functions as a housing authority under the Housing Acts of 1966-2014, request and obtain information from the following bodies,

Another Housing Authority,
The Criminal Assets Bureau,
An Garda Síochána,
The Dept of Employment Affairs & Social Protection,
TUSLA
The Health Service Executive (HSE), and/or
An Approved Housing Body

Records Retention Policy
Kilkenny County Council has adopted the National Retention Policy which gives more detail of the time period for which your personal data will be retained by Kilkenny County Council and what will happen to it after the required retention period has expired.
A copy of Record Retention Policy can be accessed via the following link,

National Retention Policy.pdf

Your Rights
You have the right to request access to personal data held about you, obtain confirmation as to whether data concerning you exists, be informed of the content and source of data and check its accuracy. In addition, if the data held by us is found to be inaccurate you have the right to change, remove, block, or object to the use of personal data held by Kilkenny County Council. In certain circumstances blocking access to data may delay or remove access to a service where the data is required by law or for essential purposes related to delivery of a service to you. Please note that to help protect your privacy, we take steps to verify your identity before granting access to personal data. To exercise these rights use you should take the following steps,

Data Protection Access Request Form.docx

Right of Compliant to the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner
If you are not satisfied with the outcome of the response you received from KILKENNY County Council in relation to your request, then you are entitled to make a complaint to the Data Protection Commissioner who may investigate the matter for you.
The Data Protection Commissioner's website is www.dataprotection.ie or you can contact their Office at:
Lo Call Number: 1890 252 231
E-mail: info@dataprotection.ie
Postal Address: Data Protection Commissioner
Canal House
Station Road
Portarlington, Co. Laois. R32 AP23.