Homelessness Privacy Notice

Lancaster City Council’s Homelessness Team has statutory responsibility for providing housing advice and assistance to residents and assessing homelessness applications in line with relevant legislation for residents who are or who could be threatened with homelessness. 

As a housing options / homelessness applicant we collect, process and store personal information about you to carry out our functions in line with you housing / homeless application or support functions such as but not limited to referrals to support providers and access to housing temporary or otherwise.

We are committed to protecting your privacy, and this statement is made in light of the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation 2016 and the Data Protection Act 2018 to advise you how we use your personal information.

The Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 requires the local authority to collect data at a case level. The quarterly Homelessness Case Level Information Collection return (H -CLIC) will provide Government information on the actions that were taken to prevent homelessness i.e. demographic information such as nationality and ethnic group; the circumstances leading to and following on from a household's homelessness application being made; the actions taken by the local authority on each case; and all temporary accommodation placements.

In addition, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) are requiring local authorities to separately provide personal data on households, such as names and addresses as part of the Homelessness Data England Project (HDE).

This data needs to be collected through H-CLIC so that the DLUHC can link the data collected on applicant households to other data sources. This will support the work being carried out by the Homelessness Policy Team in the Department. By linking data sources on homelessness, the DLUHC will be able to measure the effectiveness of a range of homelessness programmes and monitor the implementation and impact of the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017.

The addition of personal data to the H-CLIC return will mean use of the collection can be expanded to assess the longer-term outcomes of those assisted with their homelessness, the success of other DLUHC intervention projects, or to collect wider characteristics about those who are homeless to better assess why some interventions fail or succeed.

The H-CLIC Data quarterly return will be used for research and evaluation purposes only.

When do we collect personal information?

We collect information from you when you apply for assistance from us. In addition, we collect information when you fill in one of our forms, or contact us about your homeless application, either in writing, over the phone, face-to-face in one of our customer contact centres, or in response to a survey.

The homelessness legislation places a general duty on authorities to ensure that advice and information about homelessness, and preventing homelessness, is available to everyone in their district free of charge. The legislation also requires authorities to assist individuals and families who are homeless or threatened with homelessness and apply for help.

The legislation places duties on housing authorities, and gives them powers, to meet these aims. But it also emphasises the need for joint working between housing authorities, social services and other statutory, voluntary and private sector partners in tackling homelessness more effectively.

• Housing Act 1996
• Homelessness Act 2002
• Homelessness (Priority Need for Accommodation) England Order 2002
• Homeless Reduction Act 2017
• Homelessness Code of Guidance

When we collect your information to support you, we are doing so in our capacity as a public authority. The processing of your data is necessary for compliance within these regulations and legal obligations.

What personal information do we collect?

We collect personal information from you directly. (For example, online, in person or via the Customer Services team) or from third parties such as other Council services, landlords, DWP, Probation, Police, NHS, Councillors or MPs, charities and other service providers.

The types of information collected include:

• personal information. (Such as name, address, contact details, date of birth, language, gender, marital status, national insurance number) for all household members.
• Proof of housing eligibility (including photo ID, immigration status)
• special category characteristics. (Such as ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation).
• Information about your next of kin or another advocate/representative. (Such as name, contact details and relationship to you).
• Information about the referrer if different from the above, (Such as name, contact details and relationship to you).
• Health information. (Such as GP details, NHS number, medical diagnoses).
• Family information. (For example, any dependent children or other members of your household).
• Residential status (such as property ownership details, the type of tenancy you hold, your landlord’s contact details, details of any rental arrears and who those are with, details of any notices to quit or legal eviction notices including their expiry dates).
• Financial information. (Such as your income and expenditure to assess affordability, income source(s). For example, employment/benefits, next pay date(s), banking information).
• Information about other services involved and your involvement with them. (For example, criminal justice agencies, armed forces, recovery services, environmental health, benefits, mental health services).
• Your housing situation and the homelessness support that you require (such as whether you need emergency temporary accommodation, details of other agencies that you may be working with and their views on the support you require, whether you are homeless or at risk of homelessness).

How do we use your personal information?

We use your personal information to assess your housing options / homelessness application and provide you with accurate and timely advice and support.

• To enable us to carry out the legal duties for which we are responsible as a Local Authority.
• To assess and gain a full understanding of your housing situation by gathering information from a wide variety of partner agencies to establish eligibility for accommodation.
• To establish if you have a priority need to be provided with emergency accommodation.
• Managing your temporary accommodation provision where you are accommodated within the Council’s housing stock or bed and breakfast provision paid for by the service
• To make referrals to appropriate support services.
• To support you if eligible in obtaining long-term accommodation.
• To provide you with the information, advice and support you need.
• To work with charities and not-for-profit groups who have an interest in reducing. homelessness in the borough and to commission appropriate services.
• To help us assess the effectiveness of our services and to plan and improve future services.

We may use the personal information we collect to profile communities and our services.

It is in our legitimate interests to use your personally identifiable information for this purpose to understand how we are performing so we can meet our goals and objectives.

We only collect information from you and third parties which is absolutely necessary for your application / to help us advise you correctly – not providing information requested could result in your application being closed or incorrect advice being provided.  It is also a criminal offence to knowingly or recklessly give false information or withhold relevant information in your homelessness application. 

We may use your contact details to carry out market research and customer satisfaction surveys to help us to monitor our performance and to improve services to our customers.

There may also be a legal obligation for us to process the information or to demonstrate to regulatory bodies that we are fulfilling our obligations.

We conduct statistical analysis to help improve our service delivery, and to allow us to evaluate our performance against other benchmarks. When possible, statistical information is anonymised or pseudonymised.

We are required by law to protect the public funds we administer and may use your information for the prevention and detection of crime (including fraud and money laundering).

Do we protect your information?

Your personal data will be treated with the strictest confidence, and only accessible to those who need to access it for the above purposes. We have a data protection regime in place to oversee the effective and secure processing of your personal information and also utilise appropriate technical safeguards to keep your information secure.

We will only keep your information for as long as it is required by us or other regulatory bodies in order to comply with legal and regulatory requirements, or for other operational reasons. In most cases this will be a maximum of seven years after your application is closed and then will be securely destroyed.

Information will be stored on our internal management system and hosted on UK servers.

Do we share your information with anyone else?

Your information may be obtained from and shared with, the following types of organisations/services as appropriate:

• Other Council Services. (For example, Environmental Health, Council Tax, Social Services) or groups directly involved with or working with an applicant. (For example, Substance Recovery Services, Counselling Services) to work jointly to resolve a homelessness situation.
• Ideal Choice Homes, other social and private rented landlords, lettings agents and supported accommodation providers.
• Salt Ayre Leisure Centre as part of our Active Futures programme.
• Government agencies such as the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC).
• Multi-Agency Meetings. (For example, MARACs, MAPPAs or MDTs) built around an applicant to share information across involved agencies to resolve your homelessness/housing situation or for us to help relieve another situation being faced. (For example, Domestic Abuse, Ill Health and such.)
• Health services. (For example, GPs, Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust)
• Other Local Authorities – We may refer a homelessness case to another authority if the client has a connection/duty owed by that authority
• Emergency services
• Commissioned service providers
• Local Hotels/B&Bs/Accommodation Partners.
• Utility companies, charities, furniture suppliers, etc.

The council sometimes works with other third parties to deliver certain services or carry out functions on our behalf. This could include, for example, ICT suppliers, or mail service providers. Where this is the case, we may share your personal information with these third parties for any of the purposes detailed above. We will always ensure that your information is kept secure, only used for these purposes, and not disclosed further unless required by law.

Our contractors are required to comply with the law to ensure data is managed appropriately and for specified purposes.

We participate in the Cabinet Office’s National Fraud Initiative, a data matching exercise to assist in the prevention and detection of fraud. We are required to provide sets of data to the Minister for the Cabinet Office for matching for each exercise. This data may then be passed on to other public bodies to investigate any matches. For more information see  National Fraud Initiative - Lancaster City Council

We will only ever share relevant information about you with third parties where there is a legal basis for us to do so.

Your rights and how to find out more

Under data protection law, you have rights including:

• your right of access - you have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information
• your right to rectification - you have the right to ask us to rectify information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.
• your right to restriction of processing - you have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your information in certain circumstances
• your right to object to processing - you have the right to object to the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances

For further information about your rights, how we use your information, and how to get in touch if you have a query or complaint, please see our main privacy notice.

We reserve the right to amend this privacy notice at any time. However, we take your privacy very seriously and will never change our policies or practices to make them less protective of your personal information.

If we make any changes to this policy that significantly affect you, we will aim to notify you directly if we hold contact details for you. You will always be able to find the most up-to-date version of this policy on this page.

 

Last updated: June 2025