About Homelessness

This page contains East Lothian Council's privacy notice for the Housing Options team. 

1: Our contact details

2: Why we need your personal information

To prevent homelessness; assess homelessness, and provide temporary accommodation, in line with the Council’s statutory duties.

East Lothian Council is legally required to protect the public funds it administers. For this reason, your information may also be used to prevent and detect fraud, and we may share your information with other organisations responsible for auditing and administering public funds. For more information, please visit: https://www.eastlothian.gov.uk/info/210598/access_to_information/12340/privacy_and_cookies/1

3: Legal information

In order for us to collect and use your information, we have to have a ‘legal basis’ for doing so. The legal basis for processing your personal information is:

We are processing your information as part of our public task as a local authority.  We have a legal obligation to process your information under the following legislation:

• The Housing (Scotland) Act 2014
• Housing (Scotland) Act 2010
• Housing (Scotland) Act 2006
• Housing (Scotland) Act 2001
• Housing (Scotland) Act 1987 (as amended by The Housing (Scotland) Act 2001)
• The Homelessness (Abolition of Priority Need Test) (Scotland) Order 2012
• Homelessness etc. (Scotland) Act 2003

The kinds of personal information we are collecting include:

• Name
• Previous name
• Address
• Date of birth
• National Insurance Number
• *Information about other people, such as emergency contact details
• *Race
• *Ethnic origin
• *Religion
• *Sexual orientation
• *Medical/health information
• Criminal convictions/offences
• Risks of harm
• Previous housing situation
• Current housing situation
• Relationship breakdown
• Income, expenditure, and housing affordability
• Legal documentation

The types of information listed with an asterisk * are known as ‘special category’ personal information. We need an additional ‘legal basis’, in order to process these kinds of information.

The legal basis for processing your special category information is:

We need to process your information to assess and prevent homelessness and provide homelessness related services, in accordance with statutory duties.

4: Sharing and transfer

We may be sharing your personal information with the following:

• Other services within East Lothian Council, including Community Housing; Adult Social Work; Justice Social Work; Children’s Services; and Finance &Welfare Benefits Services
• NHS
• Schools
• Police
• Central Government
• Local Government – other local authorities
• Software companies
• Councillors
• Landlords and letting agencies
• Accommodation providers
• Mortgage providers
• Support providers
• Advice agencies

Your personal information will not be transferred outside of the EU.

5: How long will we keep your personal information?

We keep your personal data in line with our data retention policy, called a Retention Schedule. For a downloadable copy of the Council’s Retention Schedule, please visit our website at www.eastlothian.gov.uk and search for ‘Retention Schedule’.  

6: Your rights

1. You have the right to be informed about how your information will be used.
2. You have the right to access your personal information. Normally this is done by placing a ‘Subject Access Request’ with the Council. For more information on placing Subject Access Requests, please visit https://www.eastlothian.gov.uk/info/210598/access_to_information/12300/access_to_information/1
3. You have the right to ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete information.
4. In certain circumstances, you have the right to have your personal information erased.
5. In certain circumstances, you have the right to ask us to limit the ways we use or share your information.
6. In certain circumstances, you have the right to ask us to move, copy or transfer your information to another organisation in an electronic format.
7. In certain circumstances, you have the right to object to the ways we process your information.
8. In circumstances where your data is processed automatically, without human intervention, you have the right to certain protections.

You can find more information about data protection and your rights on the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) website at https://www.ico.org.uk.  

7: Complaints

We take your privacy seriously, and would like to know about your concerns so that we can address them as soon as possible. If you wish to make a complaint, we recommend that you contact the Council’s Data Protection Officer using the contact details at the start of this Privacy Notice.

If we are unable to resolve the issue to your satisfaction, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). You can find further information about raising a concern with the ICO on their website: https://ico.org.uk/concerns/.

You can contact the ICO by post at:

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

Telephone: 0303 123 1113 / 01625 545 745

8: Consent  

We have asked for your consent in order to process your personal information. You have the right to withdraw this consent in whole or in part at any time by contacting the Council Service listed at the start of this Privacy Notice.

When you contact us, we will explain the consequences of withdrawing consent. If you choose to continue, we will stop using your personal information for the purpose(s) stated on this Privacy Notice.

9: Information about other people

If you have provided anyone else’s personal information, please make sure that you have told them that you have given their information to East Lothian Council.  We will only use this information to:

Process your information to assess and prevent homelessness and provide homelessness related services, in accordance with statutory duties.

This information is available to download here.