Privacy Policy

Raven Homes, Raven House, 29 Linkfield Lane, Redhill, Surrey RH1 1SS. This notice will explain what personal information we collect from you and how we will collect that it. The full description of how and why we do this can be found below.

What information do we collect?

We collect information about you when you make an application with us. We also collect information when you voluntarily complete customer surveys, provide feedback or through general correspondence. Website usage information is collected using cookies. Further information may be collected such as photographs of the property.

The information we process about you may include;

  • Details about you and your children, including name, date of birth, address, Identification, documents provided to us & employment details.
  • Details about your home, household and your housing needs
  • Rent and service charge information, including details of any arrears.
  • Financial information, including any credit checks, income details, bank details, housing benefit information & any guarantor details.
  • Information about any complaints made by you or which relate to you.
  • Information regarding your marketing preferences.
  • Any photographs taken of you or your property.

If you have been the subject of a complaint, we will inform you.

We may also collect, with your explicit consent, the following information for the purposes of equal opportunities monitoring;

  • Ethnicity data
  • Sexual orientation
  • Religious Beliefs

Why do we collect this information?

We collect the majority of the information contained on the application in order to provide you with housing and associated services. Associated services includes the monitoring of any defects.

Further information may be collected on the application form for the purposes of equal opportunities monitoring. Where this information is collected it is always with your explicit consent. We will aim to anonymise this information as soon as is possible.

How will we collect this information?

Information will be collected from you personally when you enter into an agreement / contract with us. This will be in the form of applications and any other forms which may be completed in order to apply for one of our properties. Much of this will be obtained from your Help to Buy application.

We may generate further personal data regarding our leaseholders during the course of their occupation. This could be in the form of general correspondence, or this may need to be generated to satisfy our statutory obligations. An example of Raven Homes fulfilling its statutory obligations and potentially collecting personal data would be where photographs of properties are required for the purposes of monitoring defects or for assessing any health & safety risks.

Our Legitimate Interests

Security

Contacting leaseholders

Referring leaseholders who have unpaid debts to debt collection agencies

We receive referrals from the following local councils and authorities including Reigate & Banstead, Tandridge, Horsham, Mid Sussex, Crawley and Lewes.

How will we use it?

We use this data in the following ways;

  • To allocate homes;
  • To manage our Leaseholders’ accounts (including collecting rent and other charges);
  • To provide key services including repairs, home ownership, ongoing support
  • To make financial arrangements related to your home, such as to enable automatic rent payment through direct debit or deal with any mortgage arrangements;
  • To help other people or companies to provide services or utilities to your home or to contact you. This may include where they need to contact you when you first move in to set up payments or about any unpaid bills while you live at your home and/or after you leave your home;
  • To investigate and address complaints, accidents or incidents and prevent reoccurrences;
  • To provide information to our staff to enable them to provide services to you to meet your needs and to train and protect them where necessary;
  • To deal with any medical or other emergencies and to carry out your wishes or requirements such as any religious or cultural wishes;
  • To act in someone’s best interests such as where we have concerns about a person’s health or welfare and may need to involve agencies such as Social Services or the police;
  • To ensure fair and equal access for all to our services;
  • To help us compile information so that we can plan and improve the services we provide and personalise our customer services and meet our leaseholders’ needs;
  • To provide care/support services to you or work alongside other organisations who provide care/support to you & to deal with any issues arising about your care/support services;
  • To meet our obligations to bodies involved with your care/support (such as the relevant Local Authority department, Social Services or the Care Quality Commission) & show that we are meeting our obligations as your care/support provider;
  • To meet any legal and regulatory requirements & show that we are meeting our obligations as your landlord (including allowing access to information when we are audited);
  • To help us put together statistics to give to our regulator or other government organisations;
  • To provide useful information to you about Raven’s products and services including newsletters, surveys, and other information related to government schemes, welfare reform and housing policy.
  • To provide information to you about Raven including our newsletter;
  • To provide references to third parties where we are asked to (such as to a new landlord);
  • To prevent and detect crime (this will include the usage of CCTV).

Who will we share it with?

Where information is used for the reasons listed above, we may need to share the information about you and the people you live with other organisations. This will include:
  • Companies which provide services or utilities to your home (such as the gas, electric or water board) and the relevant Council Tax Department. This may be while you are living at your home or after you leave your home and may include providing a copy of your tenancy agreement when you move in and providing a forwarding address when you leave. This information may be provided to enable the company to set up your payment arrangements and/or to pursue any unpaid bills.
  • People who provide services on our behalf, such as a managing agent, contractors carrying out repairs etc.
  • A credit checking agency, your bank and mortgage company or other financial institutions and (where necessary) a debt collection and/or tracing agency.
  • Government departments which provide funding for your housing or care/support services. In particular, we may be legally required to give information about any changes in your financial circumstances to the Housing Benefit department.
  • Resident representatives and board members involved in our complaints process.
  • A doctor, hospital, paramedic or health worker where you require medical attention and are unable to provide the information yourself.
  • Your next of kin or other people acting on your behalf in an emergency and a member of your church or religious leader, where you have requested this.
  • People or agencies who provide services to you or who work with us to provide services to you, such as your care/support provider.
  • The bodies involved with your care/support such as the relevant Local Authority departments, or Social Services and any alarm call centre.
  • Our regulator or other bodies which look at how we provide services as your landlord & other people where we are legally required to provide information to them.
  • Our legal advisors, the courts and the police. This may include information about antisocial behaviour, which we may also share via a joint website accessed by landlords, the police, Social Services and other bodies with the aim of reducing anti-social behaviour.
  • Relevant Local Authority departments (including housing benefit, council tax, elections, adult services, fraud teams etc.)
  • To relevant people and authorities such as the police, adult and child protection and social services. This may include sharing information when we have concerns about a person’s health or welfare or where there are investigations being carried out, such as sharing information in a case conference with such bodies and other parties involved (such as teachers, nurses, etc.,) or where we have concerns about possible criminal activity.
  • Companies who process information on our behalf such as an external mailing company (who send out our newsletter), our archiving company, our confidential waste disposal company and providers of our information technology services or software.
  • To another landlord or housing association where you are looking to move (e.g. where they request your details &/or a reference from us).

International Transfers

Raven Homes will not transfer your information outside of the European Economic Area without adequate safeguards. Raven Homes does not transfer any personal data internationally, besides information transferred to SurveyMonkey and Mailchimp, which are both covered by the Privacy Shield.

If Raven Homes were to transfer any personal data internationally, a relevant privacy notice will be provided and the terms in this privacy notice updated.

Communications

We would like to send you useful information about Raven’s products and services. This includes newsletters, surveys and other information related to government policies, schemes and welfare reform. We may also contact you about other housing products and services. If you have consented to receive marketing, you may opt out at any time you wish by contacting us at the below details.

Details: Email at sales@ravenhomes.co.uk

Cookies

Cookies are text files placed on your computer to collect standard internet log information and visitor behaviour information. This information is used to track visitor use of the website and to compile statistical reports on website activity. For further information visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.

Access to your information and correction

You have the following rights regarding your personal data:

Right available Description of right The right in practice
Right of access You have the right to obtain confirmation from Raven Homes as to whether or not personal data concerning you are being processed, and, where that is the case, access to that personal data. Raven Homes will provide a copy of all personal data belonging to you, or specific personal data if you so require it. This will not include the personal data of any other individuals, or information regarding Raven’s operations. We will redact where possible where exemptions apply. These may include a duty of confidentiality being in place.
Right to rectification You have the right to oblige Raven Homes to rectify inaccurate personal data concerning you. Taking into account the purposes of the processing, you have the right to have incomplete personal data completed by providing a supplementary statement. This will only apply to inaccurate personal data; information contained on your application form or any flags placed on your record. This will not lead to any personal data which you disagree with being rectified, merely personal data which is inaccurate.
Right to erasure (right to be forgotten) You have the right (under certain circumstances, but not all) to oblige Raven Homes to erase personal data concerning you. This will never include current tenancy details as necessary to fulfil our contractual obligations, or any information we are required to process under law. The right to be forgotten only applies:
  • Where the personal data is no longer necessary
  • If you withdraw consent
  • If we unlawfully held your personal data
  • If you successfully object to our processing
  • If we have to follow a legal obligation to delete.
Right to restriction of processing You have the right (under certain circumstances, but not all) to oblige Raven Homes to restrict processing of your personal data. For example, you may request this if you are contesting the accuracy of personal data held about you. This right only applies:
  • Where you contend the accuracy of any personal data until it has been made accurate
  • Where you have objected to any processing whilst we present our evidence
  • If we are processing anything unlawfully and you do not wish for it to be erased
  • If we no longer need the personal data but you require the data to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim.
Right to data portability You have the right (under certain circumstances, but not all) to oblige Raven Homes to provide you with the personal data about you which you have provided to in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format. You also have the right to oblige Raven Homes to transmit those data to another controller. This right only applies to data collected by automated means. As Raven Homes does not currently undertake processing which is automated, we do not see any circumstances in which we would have to comply with this right. For a copy of your personal data, please carry out a subject access request instead.
Right to withdraw consent If the lawful basis for processing is consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent. If you wish to withdraw your consent, contact us immediately. Processing based on consent is likely to be limited to photographs at events, marketing information and in certain cases ethnicity or sexual orientation information. Withdrawing consent will not affect the legality of any processing carried where consent were given i.e. leaflets distributed will not be recalled.
Right to object to direct marketing Where your personal data are processed for direct marketing purposes, you have the right to object at any time to processing of your personal data for marketing, which includes profiling to the extent that it is related to such direct marketing. This right will apply instantaneously in most instances. If you would still like to receive marketing in one particular medium, please let us know. Raven Homes still reserves the right to contact you regarding important matters unrelated to marketing i.e. chasing rent arrears.
Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling Raven Homes does not perform any automated decision-making based on personal data that produces legal effects or similarly significantly affects you. Unlikely to occur in practice; Raven Homes does not carry out any automated decision making based on profiling. Where profiling is carried out without automated decision making, we will inform you where it crosses a certain threshold.
 

For more information about any of your rights, please visit:

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/

Who and How to Contact us

Please contact us if you have any questions in relation with this notice or the information we hold about you:

By email: sales@ravenhomes.co.uk

By phone: 0300 123 3399

By post: Sales Dept., Raven House, 29 Linkfield Lane, Redhill, Surrey RH1 1SS

If you are not satisfied with the response you receive you have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority. In the United Kingdom this is:

Information Commissioner's Office Wycliffe House Water Lane Wilmslow Cheshire SK9 5AF

(t) 0303 123 1113

(e) casework@ico.org.uk